No decent games - the group games are usually shit (with the knockouts bringing on the excitement, and a damp squib for a final)
Brazil group aside, the qualifiers from the groups are pretty predictable (on paper).
Plus England are shit. Let's have it out, you can joke about Heskey and Crouch all you want, but we, as a nation, should not need to resort to these kind of players.
I had months of excitement and anticipation, only to see them all together scrape a draw against USA (who are better than we give thgem credit for, but still), and then face the realisation that, even if all 11 players play out of their skin, there's still no way any half decent manager can nullify our forwards and find the holes in our defence.
The shit teams we face may flatter to deceive, but this isn't half the squad we had in 06 (and that's perhaps sadly what I'll always compare it to. That was 'our chance').
The one vague hope we have is in some Fabio mastery gelling everyone together to create a magic set of plucky half decent players that can read each others minds (Heskey or Crouch is no better or worse skilled than Sheringham, but look at the difference in confidence), but that will never happen with the current culture of football superstardom.
I really had my bubble burst against USA.
I just feel as if we might as well not be there, we're certainly not going to win it, and if we come across any of our classic 'foes', they will walk over us.
(Always better to line yourslef up for disappointement though, maybe it's the Spurs fan in me
)