Why the Cup still means the world to football
Do not mistake it for arrogance; the misplaced entitlement of a nation living on past glories.
Quite the contrary.
"It's coming home." The pop lyric turned ubiquitous meme generator is, for the most part, drenched in pathos. An ironic, self-knowing, self-deprecating joke.
They know it isn't. Not really. It never does. That's the point. Even if, remarkably, the slim possibility that it just might has lasted to the final week of this chaotically wonderful World Cup.
The outpouring of emotion (and a criminally large number of half-drunk pints of warm beer) in the pubs and clubs, streets and laneways, and even on top of bus shelters in London and beyond, reflects that, too.
Far from a show of triumphalism, it is instead the sharing of a communal happening. The unifying effect of common, unexpected excitement. The coming together around a cultural moment that is meaningless until it is, joyfully, imbued with such collective meaning.
External Link: England bus cartoon: tweet
That is the power at the heart of the World Cup.
And the reason it still holds relevance in an age when the international game was supposed to have been relegated to second billing by the super powers of European domestic football.
It's up for grabs now
Either Croatia, England, Belgium or France will win this World Cup.
Few would argue with any conviction that the four represent the leading quartet of international sides. France alone were rated as such going in to the tournament.
But that is not really the point. In a knock-out Cup competition surprises happen. The best team doesn't always win. We're not here merely to definitively rank every team.
It is many years since football at a World Cup represented the pinnacle of the playing of the game.
That now rests within the Champions League.
It is there the financial resources of the game are concentrated. Where the best managers and backroom staff can assemble the most complete, most balanced squads, unencumbered by passport restrictions.
The resource of time as well as money inevitably leads to better football outcomes. Club coaches can forge cohesive structures, organise players and delve deep in to detailed tactical innovations.
The World Cup offers something different. A separate touch point for the emotions of the game.
A more pronounced clash of styles and cultures, passion heightened by patriotism, which itself allows more people to connect with players and other fans through a shared sense of belonging.
It is where heroes are made and villains revealed. Those moments you chart the passage of your life by. Meaningful because we all experience them together, as families, as friends, as communities.
Russia has been a glorious embodiment of this. It has been a thrillingly unpredictable tournament with surprises on a near daily basis. Giants have fallen, eras ended and, possibly, begun.
History still to be written
With three matches left to play at Russia 2018 (the third and fourth play-off is football's version of an appendix, there, but of little use and less interest to everyone), it's abiding memory is almost certainly still to be forged.
At least two more matches of substance are needed to prevent the tournament going out on a whimper.
In 2010, a less thrilling edition of the competition, it was the crowning of the defining team of the age, the glorious Spain of Iniesta and Xavi.
In 2014 a dramatic group stage gave way to more prosaic knock out rounds, though will forever be remembered for the extraordinary semi-final between Germany and Brazil that drew the home nation together, this time in grief rather than celebration
This World Cup, it should be remembered, was not guaranteed to be the success it has been. Pre-tournament predictions were justifiably dire in many respects.
Russia's 2014 annexing of Crimea turned the nation in to an international pariah. Suspicion and mistrust grew. State sanctioned doping corrupted the winter Olympics in Sochi.
And yet the worst fears did not bear out.
The Russian people proved fine, warm, welcoming hosts. And their team exceeded their own basement low expectations.
That is no way to attempt to whitewash Russia's wretched human rights record. Those real concerns will outlive the tournament and should not be diminished by a successful sporting event.
Or, indeed, to ignore the ongoing investigation in to corruption within FIFA over the award of the finals in the first place and the seemingly endemic problems of dark governance at the heart of the organisation.
Rather to accept that a brief window of escapism is a worthwhile exercise. A timely suspension of disbelief in an age characterised by division and rancour and a certain hopelessness within politics generally.
To have some fun.
Just ask the thousands of fans from Peru who brought colour and joy to every city they briefly colonised if the tournament still matters.
Some 50,000 of them were in Russia for their country's first appearance in 36 years. Some quit jobs, sold houses, put on dangerous amounts of weight just to be there.
A first round exit did not dull their sense of celebration. It's not coming home to Lima (Cairo, Seoul, Dakar, or elsewhere), but football went on a tour across a continental sized host to remember all the same.
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