The Fourth Lion

I'm English.
I love football.
Therefore, I support the England football team.
It is a cross to bear.

English fans are always put through sheer hell. The newspapers create such unrealistic goals that our failures seem even greater than ever. We may hate the team at times, get pissed off with them alot and have sweaty nervous palms even if we're 5-0 up with 5 minutes to go, but you simply support your country.

Now if you dont have a national team worth a poo (ahem...UAE) then I guess you tend to pick someone else when it comes to World Cups and such.
This annoys me.
When England failed to qualify for the 2008 Euro's, I didnt choose another country. I just watched the tournament and enjoyed the football, all the while desperately trying to ignore the overwhelming pain of not having England involved.
But here, without a national team of your own that's ever going to get to the finals of any competition, there's a huge amount of band wagon jumping.
For the last World Cup, many started wearing Brazil shirts as if they had always supported them. Apart from Pele and 'that one that got fat' I doubt if they could tell you any more than they wear yellow. Now when Brazil were knocked out of the World Cup, the bins around town were suddenly flowing with unwanted Brazil tops and the sports shops had a sudden rush for Italian and French shirts.

My point is, us England fans live through 90 minutes of agony with every game. I can count on two fingers the important games that I actually enjoyed. (Germany 1 England 5, and more recently, Croatia 1 England 4....FYI)
As an England fan, the media always tell us we should be winning competitions but us real fans know that we just dont have what it takes and luck is rarely on our side.
I truly hope I'm wrong and one day before I leave the world, I will get to see us claim a trophy of worth. But whatever happens, I wont be switching countries just to get a bit of glory.
We invented the damn game and it just seems to haunt us.