Hype and Glory. The Decline and Fall of the England Football team, from Revie to McClaren

There have been twenty major international football tournaments since that Saturday in July 1966 when Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup trophy for England. As each of these competitions has come around, a wave of expectation has been followed, with seeming inevitability, by disappointment just weeks later. But with just three semi-final appearances to show for over forty years of effort and pain, why does England – as a team and as a nation – continue to believe that it has an almost divine right