The Germans will always be up against it when it comes to popularity contests.
It is virtually impossible to find an Englishman prepared to say a good word about our historically tetchy neighbours, let alone thank you.
But exactly a year today, Euro 2024 will be drawing to a glittering climax in Berlin.
Whether Harry Kane is leading the England team out for the match at the Olympic Stadium is beyond our control and largely irrelevant. For as anyone with half a brain knows, football is about the punters and the nation at large, not the blokes in shorts who do all the running and jumping.
And the European Championship in Germany next year will at long last put international tournaments back where they ought to be and under the right conditions.
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The multi-host format for the delayed Euro 2020 was a mess. Scattering teams all across Europe as the continent emerged nervously from the ordeal of Covid only made things seem worse.
It was a year overdue, by which time the frustrations of life under lockdowns, social distancing and travel restrictions played a part in the huge outpouring of excitement and excessive downpouring of lager at Wembley on the night of the final.
Those vulgar scenes symbolised the worst of football and an enormous letting off of steam after more than a year of life being repressed.
Either side of that fractured Euros were the World Cups in Russia and Qatar.
Pre-war Russia was a welcoming place for those who could make it there in 2018. But flitting between games in the world’s biggest country was never going to make it easy for the loyal supporters of England, let alone other nations.
It stretched 1,800 miles from east to west. Russia also lacks the transport links of the USA, where much of the next one is being staged. It doesn’t have the theme parks, or the beaches either to combine a football trip with a holiday.
Last November was the weirdest World Cup yet, plonked in the middle of the Arabian desert in Qatar.
Switched last-minute from summer because the 50-degree temperature is too much to bear, a winter tournament failed to fill the pubs back home apart from on England nights.
It was the same underwhelming sentiment out there in a nation where the level of football played would struggle to hold up in League One.
Undemocratic, criticised for its human rights record, Qatar came and went amid a political storm that overshadowed sport.
Arguably, since Germany hosted the World Cup in 2006, there has been only one venue to suit the fans of traditional football countries.
That was France in 2016, when England lasted four games before being sent packing by unfancied Iceland, triggering a major overhaul in coaching terms and in the way we view our national team.
England did not qualify for Euro 2008. The World Cup was held in South Africa in 2010 and those who were there still hear the awful Vuvuzela trumpets and suffer sleepless nights.
Our games at Euro 2012 were in far-flung Ukraine, and 24 months on some fans boarded the long flight to the 2014 Brazil World Cup already knowing we were coming home. We bowed out with a miserable goalless draw against the titans of Costa Rica to finish bottom of Group D. And all set against a four-hour time difference.
Now at last England are heading for a tournament in good shape that is local and unrestricted by the invisible menace of Covid. The team is buoyant, qualification is merely a formality and there are players in the team coming of age at just the right time.
Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka and Jude Bellingham form an exciting triumvirate in Southgate’s ranks that can take the cause to the opposition with youthful energy but also growing confidence.
The Under-21s are fresh from winning their European Championship with blossoming talent: Anthony Gordon, Levi Colwill, Cole Palmer. By this time next year who knows what kind of players they will be with another English season under their belts?
Let’s also not underplay that England have recently travelled to Naples and Munich for traditionally spicy fixtures with relatively few incidents among the support.
The narrow defeat in the Euro 2020 final, the World Cup semi-final in 2018 and the continued faith placed in England coach Gareth Southgate has provided longevity, stability and genuine cause for optimism within the camp.
And international football as a whole may be about to emerge into the light after a period of darkness.
*18+ | BeGambleAware | Odds Subject to Change
