I feel slightly bad talking about a subject as trivial as football, when much worse things have happened over the past few days. But this has been brewing in my mind since Saturday afternoon, and I need to get it out.

England qualified for the World Cup on Saturday. Not that you’d have known it. Despite qualifying with a match spare, the knives are still out for the hapless Swedish coach, Sven-Goran Eriksson. England may win their group, or be one of the best runners-up, but that will not satisfy the curiously strong sense of entitlement to success that the average England fan possesses. The Swede is under continual pressure to perform, and after a couple of duff performances. There are calls for his resignation in the gutter press, and disgruntled fans have taken to lobbing bricks through his window. Sven is at the mercy of expectations of a mind-bogglingly unreasonable nature.

Are these expectations unreasonable? We have a long and proud history, right? Well, no, we don’t. England didn’t play in a World Cup until the fourth tournament in 1950 (after falling out with FIFA back in the day, they missed out on the first three). They didn’t exactly storm the scene then - instead they promptly lost 1-0 to the United States. Allegedly, the British press, thinking there was a misprint on the wires reported it as 10-1. It was a sign of things to come: failure dressed up as success. England continued to struggle, as exemplified by Ferenc Puskas et al. beating them 7-1 in Budapest in 1954, and would get no further than the quarter-finals in 1954, 1958 and 1962.

Even England’s brief period of glory, the one that we still talk about, 41 years later, was contentious. In the 1966 World Cup final, England’s third goal against West Germany has never been conclusively proven to have crossed the line, and the fourth occurred as a pitch invasion was starting. However, at least then Ramsey’s side had the vindication of coming third in the 1968 European Championships, and being the only side that gave 1970 World Cup winners Brazil a good run for their money in that tournament. But even that didn’t last; England only got as far as the last eight in Euro ‘72, and after that it was dark, dark days. The side didn’t qualify at all for the 1974 or 1978 World Cups - for most of that decade England was off the world footballing map.

In comparison to those dark days, Eriksson has done quite well - three tournaments aimed for, three got. Only one competitive loss in qualification (to Northern Ireland), and two more in tournament finals (France in 2004 & Brazil in 2002). Not bad for a middling European team over five years. In terms of performances, Eriksson has a better win ratio than any England coach since Ron Greenwood, except for Glenn Hoddle (another coach unfairly singled out for attack despite an excellent competitive record). Simply put, he is one of the best managers England have ever had.

Not that you’d know it. Of special interest is the fact that in terms of wins, Eriksson outdoes both Venables and Robson, the two recent coaches most lauded by the press. They perhaps forget that Robson’s England side were inconsistent and overrated: though they were unlucky in Mexico ‘86, they were an utter disaster in Euro ‘88. While in Italia ‘90, supposedly England’s second finest hour, they were far from the lionised side that our rewritten history recounts. After a turgid, draw-ridden group stage, England were outplayed by Belgium but won with a last-minute goal, and then needed a dodgy penalty against Cameroon to get to the semi-finals. Without Lineker and Gascoigne, that tournament would have been a failure too, but luckily for us we had West Germany to knock us out on penalties. In one fell swoop, the story of an average side that had a couple of lucky matches could be rewritten as a heroic adventure of all-conquering men who were cut down in their prime by the Hun (no other side, not even Argentina, would have made it the story it was). Paul Gascoigne’s tears betrayed the human side of the glory, and his youth promised a new era of success. Except that it wasn’t glory, nor the start of a new era. Unlike in 1966, 1990 England’s luck soon ran out, and under Robson’s successor, Graham Taylor, Euro 92 was a disaster and England didn’t even reach the ‘94 World Cup.

In fairness Robson did at least make a half-decent side, even though they were never the world beaters they were made out to be. Venables, however, was a mediocre manager who just happened to get very lucky. He had one tournament, Euro 96, for which his England side didn’t have to qualify. They played in front of a home crowd, and yet they still won only two of their five matches. In one they had a missed McAllister penalty to thank, and the other was against a Dutch side riven with internal dissent and accusations of racism. In the quarter finals, Spain scored a perfectly good goal but it was ruled offside; it finished 0-0 and England won in the shootout. Then in the semi-finals, once again the Germans came to England’s rescue by knocking us out on penalties, thus turning an overrated side of distinctly average players into heroes once again.

Out of such stuff fairytales are made, and the fairytale in this case is that England ever were a footballing superpower. Aside from the brief period of international domination between 1966 and 1970 (or thereabouts), this has never been the case. A telling statistic can be gleaned if we look at England’s performances against the “big six” sides since the 1970 World Cup - Argentina, Brazil, France, (West) Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. All eight World Cup finals since 1970 have been played between two of these six sides. In the 28 competitive international matches England has played against these teams since 1970, they have only won six. None of those wins came between 1982 and 1996, and before Sven came round, that number stood at four. Laughably, England fans consider Germany, a side that has won three World Cups and three European Championships, to be their biggest “rivals”, when England are actually little more than relative minnows.

Eriksson took what was a terrible and moribund England, worked wonders to make them into a half-decent side (as anyone who compared England’s 1-0 loss to Germany in 2000 with the 5-1 victory in 2001 can clearly see). He’s had a bit of luck - a few world class talents (Beckham, Rooney) have appeared during his time, although these have been mitigated by the lack of a decent goalkeeper or left winger. His good work has brought England to the class they deserve - a half-decent European team. Our continual inability or unwillingness to set up a national sporting infrastructure like Germany’s or Australia’s means that we will never be able to produce the quality of a side that will consistently be the fear of the world, yet we still think above our station.

England fans are deluded if they think the current side is filled with world class players. There’s a couple of good players, and the rest of the first XI are OK, but they aren’t exactly in demand on the Continent. How many top European clubs do you see clamouring for English internationals? To make things worse, England are desperately short of options once the first XI are injured; Ashley Cole’s injury required Jamie Carragher to fill in, badly, at left back on Saturday. Gary Neville, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard are all similarly difficult to replace.

Fully fit, and with a bit of luck, England can beat a top class side. On a bad day and with a couple of key players missing, a crap team like Northern Ireland can nick a result. In the long run, they’ll go some distance, but never get close to winning anything. Supporters of sides of a similar calibre (Sweden, Belgium, Poland etc.) would be content with a good, but not quite good enough, kind of side that might occasionally impress, and qualifying for the World Cup a match early would be seen as an achievement to be proud of. But not the English.

Of course, there is the question - why do we need this delusion, and the continual revisionism it demands? I’m not totally sure. Maybe it is to make up for our diminishing stature internationally; whether you take the view we’re the poodle of America, or the EU is encroaching on our shores, England/Britain is getting ever littler either way - we need to find any way we can of feeling big. Maybe it’s for more sporting reasons - because we invented the game (but then, we haven’t done the same in the cricket, up until this year’s Ashes), or because we can’t get over 1966 (which bodes ill for our rugby team in 40 years’ time) - football must want to come home, right? I’m not sure which explanation’s better, to be honest. It could just be some freakish national psychosis, peculiar only to the English (neither the Welsh nor the Scottish foist similar expectations on their national sides).

Compounding Eriksson’s problem is that thanks to circumstances elsewhere, expectations are even more unreasonably high than usual. England’s rugby players have won the World Cup, our cricketers hold the Ashes. In club football, Liverpool are currently European Cup holders (albeit with very few English players in the side). Unless you’re 50 or over, the FIFA World Cup is the one big prize we have no memories of winning. Sven faces an impossible task - to live up to the expectations of a nation deluded by its own footballing ability and international stature. Nothing can save him, nothing at all.

Unless Germany knock us out on penalties, that is.