Keith Duggan/Sideline Cut: England may win this World Cup. But do they really want to? From the second World War to Basil Fawlty, few nations can thwart the Germans so completely as the English. Forget the humiliation and misery the Germans have heaped upon England with penalty victories in 1990 and 1996, it is hard to quibble with two World Wars and one World Cup. Ruling Germany this summer would give Blighty immortal bragging rights.

With the spirit of 1966 hanging over this tournament and the fact that Blighty are actually travelling to the Fatherland with an athletic, talented and driven group of players, they could, conceivably, manage a run of four consecutive knock-out victories against prestige nations, thereby becoming champions of the world and . . . then what?

The English should really consider if they want to win the World Cup, that elusive golden orb that will at once return them to 1966, when the Empire was still a shining illusion, when the Queen was young, when punk rock and hooliganism were just a dark distant cloud and when the BBC man could make an observation like "and Seaman is coming out!" without an arch and knowing look from Graham Norton.

Although the plucky victory by Clive Woodward's methodical, professional and dreary rugby team in the winter of 2003 was the toast of modern England, it hardly made an impression on places like the Liverpudlian housing estate where Wayne Rooney set about making real the universal boyhood dream. England enjoyed the novelty of being champions of the world and the Range Rover set of Surrey celebrated all through the following rugby season. But just three years on, all the old doubts and insecurities that have haunted the self-belief of England rugby are back in spades.

Football is the national game and it is the last, living tool through which England can express its greatness and importance to the world. Much has been made in England of the eccentricity and possible cluelessness of England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, who has been caricatured and pilloried beyond belief by the more right wing and extreme representatives of the London press.

When the Swede was given the job, a significant body of opinion believed only a man wedded to the philosophy of Churchill and fit to sing God Save the Queen should be permitted to manage the country. Therefore, presumably, a significant number of English football people will consider it a national humiliation if a horny, bespectacled Scandinavian should be the saviour of England.

Certainly, Eriksson is a far cry from the regimental, cool and succinctly native Alf Ramsey, who has become a somewhat saddening figure some 40 years after leading England to one of her most joyful experiences of the 20th century.

A few months ago I had the pleasure of spending an hour in the company of Gordon Banks, the raven-haired, grinning goalkeeper who was the epitome of assurance and calm: a man to be counted on.

A pensioner now, he wore a blazer and tie and loafers and was possessed of a profound dignity and sense of self and as he spoke of his upbringing in the mining community of Tinsley, Sheffield, it was clear he was speaking of a very traditional and rooted society that had disappeared.

His most animated remarks were not inspired by Pele or the shimmering memories of that 40-year-old summer but by the appalling degeneration of England's schools, the deep disappointment he and many of his contemporaries felt at the failure of the Blair administration to halt the erosion of civil and moral order in England's towns and cities. And these were not the cranky musings of an elderly man: paraphrasing MacMillan, Banksy was happy to note that in many ways, England has never had it so good.

He wasn't pining for a return to Housman's blue remembered hills. But he was genuinely worried about the devastating lack of local - and therefore national - pride, bearing, respect, good manners: the stuff he and so many of his generation have in spades.

One imagines there are hundreds if not millions of people across England in much the same boat as Gordon Banks, decent people desperately proud of their country but unsure of where it has gone, exactly. The Falklands War was the last damp squib of Empire. The Iron Lady is doddery these days, the monarchy seems both sinister and irrelevant, the Rolling Stones will potter around Twickenham this August in a wrinkled parody of their original precocity, and Britons are more interested in Big Brother than in Tony Blair's war on terror.

Only football, only England, can galvanise the national spirit from the daily torpor, the indifference, the sleepy moral decay that afflicts Tim and Gareth and Finchy and the rest of the crew in The Office.

It is a curious phenomenon, the England football bandwagon at full tilt: loud, vain, eager to please and endearingly uncertain. In most countries, particularly dear old Ireland, it provokes an instinctive and heartfelt mixture of antipathy, amusement and a deep, residual fear that we might be forced to listen to national gloating if the England footballers ever managed to win anything. The downside to having been an aggressive, colonising force is invaded countries tend not to forgive very easily. And yet England's domestic football culture has never been more abundantly healthy or more popular.

The grip the Premiership television product has taken on this country is no passing fad, it is the real thing and the fact is that today in Germany, England will field a group of players that many Irish sports fans idolise during the winter. It is no accident that two most important and fascinating players among England's World Cup 11, Rooney and Steven Gerrard, hail from Liverpool, the most resolutely anti-establishment and independent of all England's cities.

Although the fixation on Rooney's injury is typically overblown and dangerous, it looks more and more as if the prodigy will play some part in the national effort and his exploits in Portugal two years ago suggest he enjoys the grand occasion. And Gerrard may be the closest thing to the working class hero John Lennon sang about all those years ago, a dedicated, wholehearted footballer with a gift for the flair moment, whose sense of place and of self is more representative of Gordon Banks's generation than of his own.

If England triumph on German fields this summer, then the national euphoria will be immense and possibly troubled. But then there will be literally nothing left to conquer: the quest will be over. They will turn out the lights at the stadiums, the Germans will be generous and gracious as they direct the fans to their economy flights, tolerating the inevitable chants of "two World Wars and two World Cups, do-dah."

The thing is that afterwards, after so much emotional investment, with all the trappings of nationalism and the undeniably intimidating sight of thousands of English suede heads draped in the symbols of Empire singing and marching through foreign cities, after all that, the world will quickly forget and it will slowly dawn on England that what has been won was no more nor less than a football tournament.

And then the realisation that that triumph, however magnificent, may not be enough to restore the uncomplicated days of valour and pluck and holidays in Brighton and of managers who spoke like Alf Ramsey.

Better, perhaps - safer, perhaps - to fail gloriously, to bow out in a tear- and sweat-drenched semi-final, on a missed Beckham penalty, a Terry own goal, an Eriksson blunder or a moment or South American genius. Better to come close enough to feel the sweet breezes of 1966 but to leave the dream achingly and deliciously unfulfilled. It is not about whether we in Ireland or the ex-colonies want England to win anymore. It is whether the English really want it themselves.