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The news that England lost to Romania in the European Championship, sending the British team prematurely out of the cup, has filled more column inches here than a civil war in Southern Africa. Certainly the English papers have been full of national foreboding. "Keegan Must Go!" proclaimed The Observer, "Nevastated", said The Sun. The Guardian chimed in with the cruellest of headlines, "Kevin Keegan Ha, Ha, Ha". These are not good times for the England football fan. Arrested in their hundreds, the supporters then watched their team thrown out at the first hurdle. So why did England do so badly? The most obvious and superficial answer would be to blame Phil Neville, whose ill-timed and wrong-footed tackle gave away the last-minute penalty which lost England their third game. Such an answer, though, is just not sufficient. Why were England playing a right-footed player at left-back, a man who is barely on the fringes of his club side's third squad? More to the point, why is such a performance counted as failure? The English team made the final stage of the European Championships, doing better than Scotland, Russia or Ukraine. To be counted somewhere in the lower half of the European top twenty, is not an obvious sign of failure.

While England's footballers under-performed in Belgium and Holland, their cricket equivalents were stumbling to a three-day defeat against the West Indies. This humiliation was far more profound -- coming at the hands of a team who had not won overseas in ten Tests. In place of the hapless Phil Neville, cricket fans could enjoy that second great symbol of English national pride, the Zimbabwe-born Graeme Hick, who scored nought in each innings -- his first pair -- to reinforce his reputation as a "flat-track bully", an expert at caning county sides who is incapable of thriving in international competition. Following their defeat, England are ranked seventh of the eight test-playing countries. Zimbabwe are one place below -- and they were unlucky to lose their series in England 1-0.

The frailty of these English teams tells you relatively little about the generation of players who compose the squads. Performance is always relative -- and for every incompetent English cricketer there is a talented rower, or a world-class pro at Real Tennis. Of more interest is the claim that moderate sporting prowess should be a source of national shame. Tony Blair has been photographed with both Alex Ferguson and Kevin Keegan. There is nothing more New Labour than football. Yet no minister allowed themselves to be observed watching the English débàcle. Even Sports Minister Kate Hoey stayed away. It seems that in the contemporary national consciousness, sporting decline has taken the place previously occupied by Imperial success. France is a nation of romantics, Italians run away from a fight, the Japanese are industrious, the Russians are beset by Mafia gangs. The English produce second-rate team players, and the British are on the way out.

It is always easier to announce successful predictions with the benefit of hindsight. And in this spirit, I will admit that I told everyone who asked me that England would lose two games of three, beating only Germany, the one team in the Championships who were in a more catastrophic free-fall. In advance of the tournament, there seemed to be something so 'right' about this speculation. England would lose to their first game, to a collection of technically accomplished thirty-somethings. This would be seen as a moment of national crisis. But defeat would be followed by a partial revival. Germany -- an old enemy of little current consequence -- would be defeated. The press would suddenly decide that England were, despite everything, the best team in the world. Then Romania, another ageing, talented side like Portugal, would brush past the incompetent Anglos (the French term is les fuckoffs). A new and more complete national disgrace would be achieved. This prediction had little regard for current form, but was based instead on the recurrent national story of defeat, partial recovery, followed by renewed decline. And as the story went, so it came about.

When the great West Indian cricket team of the 1980s encountered the English at Lord's and Trent Bridge, they did so as the carriers of a national myth. Arrogant, violent, athletic and triumphant, the success of the Windies acted as a surrogate for the failure of the project of the islands to achieve state unity over the previous twenty years. I remember watching Viv Richards once take a catch for Somerset in a limited over game. Some county player -- it might have been John Emburey -- had launched a pull towards the mid-on boundary for six. Richards jogged easily along the side of the ropes, seeming to leaving the ball behind as he trundled along his way, and it flew across the edge. Ten seconds later, it seemed, he turned over his hand to reveal the ball caught in his palm. And his grin! To the spectator, it seemed a feat of near-impossible skill, achieved with nonchalance, humour and pride. So much better than successful state formation, to watch your team triumph in its pomp.

The Liverpool football team of the 1970s and 1980s played a similar role. For a city which drew its modern identity from the rise and decline of religious sectarianism, trade union struggle and the militancy on the docks, Thatcher's years were inevitably fraught. Toxteth burned, and Militant briefly prospered. But if Derek Hatton was the answer, then someone was asking the wrong question. And the defensive leftism of the 1980s was unable to resist the onslaught of down-sizing and containerisation. "Gissa job", said Yosser Hughes. In this context, the team's graceful passing football offered a symbol of the enduring virtues of the skilled working-class. Inevitably, the team imploded in the mire of Heysel and Hillsborough. In place of the old virtues, the new team of the 1990s marked the eventual triumph of a Thatcherite individualism. If they couldn't out-play their opponents, Manchester United could at least buy the squad. "You'll never get a job", the London football fans used to sing at Liverpool teams -- how ironic then, that the sporting challenge would come from Liverpool's increasingly-prosperous neighbour, its once and true rival.

So what, finally, is the lesson of England's defeat? Any team's fate is tied intimately to the success of the myths which animates that team's supporters. Either local rise or decline can be enough to encourage sporting success, but something exciting must be present. It seems to me that the major sporting teams of England -- football, cricket, rugby, in that order -- are incapable of achieving measured success. Either they win (everything!) or they lose. But the cliché of politics, that all careers end in failure, is no less true in sport. All cup runs must come to an end. As long as the memory of Britain's economic, then imperial, then military hegemony remains, then anything less than ultimate triumph will be understood here as miserable defeat. Burdened by this enormous weight of expectation, English and British sport will remain unsatisfied and incomplete. So to end with another prediction: none of these English teams will win a World Cup in the next thirty years - and perhaps not even until the memory of Empire is gone. All national myths are unreal, but the English myths seem more obvious and more increasingly bizarre than most. The Kingdom is not United. Britain does not rule the waves. Prince William will not save the monarchy -- not even God could save the Queen's miserable brood now. And England will not win the cup -- or not in my lifetime, anyway.