I AM really looking forward to next summer’s football World Cup finals.

Yes, one could raise concerns about whether Brazil is the best place to host such a high-profile sporting event, but that could be said of the majority of countries across the globe, if we are taking political, economic and humanitarian issues into account.

I’m uneasy with all that stuff, but that unease would not entirely dissolve if the whole shebang were shifted somewhere else.

No, I’m looking forward to it, because this will be a World Cup finals largely free of the ridiculous hyperbole that usually accompanies an England team into these tournaments.

You know the sort of thing – all key players fit, kind group-stage draw, lucky breaks and all that – England might, just might, win the World Cup. That sort of idiotic squawking has followed England around in the build-up to major tournaments for decades, most recently the 2002 and 2006 World Cup finals, and the Euro 2004 finals, when the so-called Golden Generation was in its pomp.

In English football terms of course, a Golden Generation usually means that there are four or five truly world class players in the same team, offsetting the rest of the economy-class talent lucky enough to be selected.

In that respect, England’s has not been so much a Golden Generation, as a gold-plated one. Chip off the gold and beneath it has been rusty, brittle old iron.

And if that was a Golden Generation of footballers, then how should the current lot be valued? The Corrugated Cardboard Generation? Uneven in composition and prone to collapse under pressure. One could carry on with such wordplay all day, but I’ll resist.

Suffice to say that at around 9.30pm on Friday, November 15, even the most optimistic England supporter would surely have thrown up their hands and told themselves that it’s just not worth re-mortgaging the house, kissing a tearful family goodbye, and spending thousands following the team to Brazil.

Why risk getting mugged or worse, for the pitiably short time it will take for this team to get knocked out?

At about that time last Friday evening, Alexis Sanchez clinically slotted home Chile’s second goal at Wembley to consign England to a dismal 2-0 defeat, of which the most charitable thing that might be said of the home team’s performance was that they were lucky to get ‘nil’. Over my car radio I could hear the whine of England fans’ fatally punctured hopes gradually fade to silence.

The following insipid 1-0 defeat to the old foe Germany – a team that boasts more players deserving of inclusion in a Golden Generation on its substitute’s bench than does England’s entire squad – merely confirmed that in World Cup finals terms next summer will be short and nasty, rather than lengthy and glorious.

Roy Hodgson, a decent chap making a decent fist of pretending that the poisoned chalice of England management is actually a rather fetching Wedgwood tea set, will do his best, and urge his players to do theirs. But their best will not be good enough. I reckon the whole process – ignoring the meaningless pre-tournament friendlies, training camps, and endless tabloid agonising over some key player’s inevitable metatarsal injury – should last about eight or nine days, depending on the spacing of the group matches.

Get an ‘easy’ group and England might reach the second round, or Round of 16, as football authorities have taken to calling it. But end up in the ‘group of death’, or gruppo della morte as the Italians so beautifully put it, and it is likely to be three games and they are out.

I take no pleasure in predicting such a scenario. Though English, my feelings for the national team have always been ambivalent.

But without the hype maybe, just maybe, we can enjoy a carnival of football. And if the tournament fails to inspire, it will be summer and somewhere there’s bound to be a half-decent cricket match to watch.