I refuse to get excited about the World Cup

Some of you out there probably remember I used to ply my trade writing about football ... and for that very reason I regard myself as anything other than an expert on the subject!
England manager Roy Hodgson. Photo: Mike Egerton/PA Wire.England manager Roy Hodgson. Photo: Mike Egerton/PA Wire.
England manager Roy Hodgson. Photo: Mike Egerton/PA Wire.

I have delighted in Burnley’s well-deserved, hard-earned and thrilling promotion to the Barclays Premier League.

And that delight is not just in the fact they have achieved it, it is more about the way Sean Dyche marshalled his troops, went about his business and defied all pre-season expectations to earn a place at football’s top table.

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As Burnley supporters, we can now all draw our breath and wait for a new season to unfold.

And by now we will all have done our calculations and worked out just how 17th place, at the very worst, can be achieved

But before that happens there is the small matter of the FIFA World Cup due to kick-off in Brazil in 27 days.

Are you getting excited yet?

I really haven’t made my mind up.

I have looked forward to every World Cup since 1970, excluding the three we forgot to qualify for, of course, as a chance to win the world crown again.

Clearly, on each occasion I have been disappointed.

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I have looked back at all of those World Cups recently and realised we had a good chance of doing very well in at least half of them.

But on each occasion we failed to live up to my expectations.

And the reason I cannot get worked up about this year’s competition yet is simple.

In all honesty, I really do not know what to expect from the current England team.

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I am not going to bang on about the state of the English game, the number of non-English managers, never mind players, in the top flight or what could be done to bolster what is still widely held to be our national sport.

Sure enough, we have a couple of players who could play for just about any club in the world of football.

But do we have enough of them?

I’m not sure.

And for that very reason I refuse to get excited until we are 3-0 up against Italy!