I will be supporting England in the World Cup. Cautiously. When you’re an England fan, you know that disappointment is right around the corner.

I wrote about my disappointment in 2014: What The Hell Am I Gonna Do With This Damn England Jersey? I was upset that they didn’t even make it out of the group stage. A successful showing in a World Cup, honestly, would have been losing a quarterfinal on penalties. That means they would have gotten out of the group stage, one their round of 16 game, then gone on to the quarterfinal and exited unceremoniously but without much fault. It would have been respectable if not admirable. Instead, they didn’t win a game.

This is the English national team.

I recently re-read chapter two of Soccernomics (the pre 2010 World Cup edition but it still holds up) “Why England Loses and Others Win” and realized that it’s always the same with England, every time. I think we’ve actually moved on from Phase 1 of that chapter in which England enters the World Cup thinking it can win. English fans have wised up. We are now anticipating the problems that will hasten our inevitable exit.

Nick Hornby is already pleading with England to just play well enough so that their citizens can focus on something other than Brexit. He’s also making excuses for the squad. They’re young and “not celebrities, not yet,” like previous generations of teams. And these young, hungry players could surprise everyone, much like, Hornby notes, the Spurs players who are on this England team surprised Real Madrid in the Champions League. But, of course, the died in the wool Gooner had to get in a dig at Spurs.

“Then you remember who won the Champions League, and that the Spurs vs. Real Madrid game was a group match that didn’t count for much, and that when it came to the crunch, Spurs (who are providing five of the 23-man squad) conceded two late goals to a battle-hardened Juventus team and went out of the competition.”

(Arsenal legend Tony Adams was far less subtle on this point claiming that with all the Spurs players, England will lack that winning mentality. As a Spurs fan I am offended and upset at the accuracy of this claim.)

The English are nowhere near as hopeful as Americans and far more self deprecating. There’s a bitterness to English fans that American fans probably can’t understand. Most of us support teams in National leagues, e.g. Major League Baseball, the NHL, NBA, and NFL. We have ups and downs but we don’t know what it’s like to have a team drop to the minors and then the league below the minors and still follow that team with the same passion (See: Leeds United, Nottingham Forest, Sheffield Wednesday, and Millwall, a team that to my knowledge has not been in the top flight in the Premier League era).

But back to Soccernomics. According to authors Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, all of this is a moot point because, mathematically, England have consistent results over the long term. They are essentially a 10th place team in the world and their record shows it. Taking into account population size, national income, and years of experience in soccer, England should win about two-thirds of their games. And they do. It’s just never enough to win a tournament.

All of the talking and pontificating and philosophizing about how English players are more loyal to club than country and all of the finger pointing at Ronaldo’s smirk at the ref and Maradona’s hand of God, it’s all just trying to explain away the fact that England are an above average national team but, unfortunately, they’re just an above average national team. (The chapter in Soccernomics is really worth the read.)

So, why bother?

I’ve got three reasons.

My dad was from England.

This isn’t necessarily the romantic story of a father son bond over a sport that stood in for real emotional ties. My father and I both liked soccer, though. He coached my teams and it was something for us to do together. We went to a local bar in Rochester to watch the 1998 final in France when I was of legal age. It was cool. In high school we drove to Detroit to watch a friendly between England and Germany.

But my English ancestry just bonds me to the team, somehow. They’re an actual contender* that has won the World Cup before. They’re generations ahead of the U.S. Men’s team, so, they’re my default team.

* I know that’s ironic given everything I’ve said up until now but it’s true. They’re contenders. Long shots, but contenders.

I’m familiar with British players.

Since I watch the Premier League, I know all of the English players. Much like the Italian league, all of the English team players play in their home league. I for one am excited that this team is full of Spurs players.

They got to me early.

In the late eighties and early nineties, there wasn’t much soccer to be had in the United States. The Cosmos was gone along with any kind of professional soccer in the States. My father got us a subscription to a news print magazine called Soccer America (I believe?) that covered mostly American college soccer and whatever the national team happened to be doing. I was a soccer starved kid in the suburbs of America.

But I had one game. It was the VHS recording of the England vs. West Germany semi final from 1990. I watched that tape over and over and over again. I knew every players on the squad. I knew exactly what was coming and when. My friends would come over and I would have that tape playing on the VCR and they would either roll their eyes or laugh at me.

And here’s the thing. The VHS tape my dad used was only ninety minutes – the length of a game. But when it goes to over time, there are two more fifteen minute halves, then penalties. So, my father, while recording, got to the end, stopped it, re-wound, and started recording the overtime. So, whenever I would watch, I would start with the end, see England lose the penalty shoot out (Lineker made it, Beardsley made it, Platt made it, Pearce’s was saved, Waddle skied it), then continue watching the rest of the game to the end of full time.

That’s the kind of devotion only a middle schooler knows and that devotion was aimed at the English national team.

So, here we are, twenty-eight years later. England haven’t won a World Cup since (and they didn’t even qualify for ’94 in America). I’ll consider them getting out of the group stage a success this time around. Or perhaps the stage is set for one of the greatest World Cups England has ever known.

Or maybe I’m just thinking that because, before the games are actually played, I can.