No, football isn't coming home - the truth is, it never left
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There is something bout football which makes even the most rational person start believing in fairy stories.
That penalties are cursed, Wembley has magic turf and it is possible to return to 1966 when everyone was young and beautiful and tra-la-la.
Stuff science, and probabilities, and the fact Wembley gets re-seeded every year, receives no direct sunlight for 6 months and its grass is grown using underground heaters and a system of perambulatory polytunnels.
Ignore the dementia, the effect of allegedly-meat pies on your digestion and that in 1966 England was mostly dank, poor and miserable with 3 million people living in actual, genuine, foul, slums.
The Beatles' music didn't make it bearable; the fact they were poor kids did.
And with football the magic does not happen on the pitch. The spells are woven in the stands.
(Image: TASS)
It is not what we see unfold that makes us gasp or groan. It is the people around us who do the same, the unity and openness of high emotion, and the ability to be, for 90 minutes or so, a tribe.
In a world where we are increasingly individualised by -isms and isolated from one another by technology, where we date and work and skive online, we trek to the stadium, pub or TV set to reconnect.
That's why we chant, even when it's nasty. Not to cheer or cajole the team, but to rouse ourselves or our enemies. For a brief period we enjoy a near-psychic link to thousands of others, a phenomenon by which a complex joke, biting social commentary or vicious put-down can leap through a crowd quicker than a summer cold.
We are not I, at a football match. We are us.
(Image: David Ramos - FIFA)
Academic studies have shown that football chants are the modern-day version of folk music or storytelling, an oral tradition that stretches back to the cave and the campfire.
We sing to bond and share. Some chants are historic, others spontaneous, but they function to remind us we are one.
One bit of recent research found that if you make one group of people march up and down in unison, and let another group just walk as they wish, when you ask them both to feed woodlice into a mincer those who marched together are more likely to do as they're told.
It may sound grim - the woodlice were fine, it was a pretend mincer - but there is an evolutionary purpose to that unity. It not only makes the tribe a more effective fighting and hunting force, but it binds a community together, from toddlers to grandparents.
(Image: London News Pictures Ltd)
Best Harry Kane penalty memes from England's World Cup victory against Colombia
Losing doesn't really matter because you still get all that, plus the best sort of angry sadness, when you know you're not alone and it's definitely someone else's fault.
Winning, in that context, is just the cherry on the top.
That's why mums, children, grandparents, brothers, workmates, coppers and thieves alike all watch the match, despite the idiots and racism you sometimes see. And that's also why, when idiots are racist in a crowd, it matters.
We do not think, at a football match. We feel. We are infected with joy, victory, agony, despair. We are normal people with ordinary lives and then, for a bit, we are the Chosen Ones who can be lifted to glory by the capricious hand of fate.
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So when England beat Colombia on penalties it was "redemption" for manager Gareth Southgate, rather than preparedness. He served a biblical exile for 22 years after missing a shot in 1996 and now the prodigal son can be welcomed to the nation's bosom once more.
At least until fate abandons him again.
Never mind that, having personal experience of the pressure of a penalty shoot-out, the current England manager might have been better at his job than a lot of his predecessors.
That's the job we pay him £1.8m a year for, and expect him to do well at, because leaving things like that up to fate would be MADNESS.
When Jordan Pickford saved one penalty he became a man touched by destiny, despite the fact he hadn't saved the other one because Mateus Uribe hit the crossbar.
It should actually mean he was a man touched by good luck, because if Uribe hadn't gone off-target the match would have gone to sudden death and half of us would have gone behind the sofa.
You're more likely to miss penalties the longer they go on - and 1 in 5 are saved. Pickford did no more than a statistician would expect, but he's still a prince in our eyes.
(Image: Joosep Martinson - FIFA)
People are only saying football's coming home because the 30 and 40-somethings who currently form the bulk of supporters, and also idle their time away on social media, sang that song 22 years ago when the Lightning Seeds was a band rather than a new gadget for the greenhouse.
Everyone loved what Gareth Southgate did after England won penalty shoot-out against Colombia
It's not coming home, because football doesn't belong in England rather than somewhere else. It's not coming home because of Wembley's turf or Gazza's tears or even because it's about bloody time.
It's not even coming home because of the rational explanation that we had an easy group, cheats never prosper and most of the favourites have been knocked out so the tournament is one big, open goal so long as no-one is stupid enough to upset Vladimir Putin and get the whole stadium crop-dusted with Novichok.
Football is not coming home for the simple reason it never left. What football is and means is right here, in our hearts and minds. It always was and will be, because there is no way for a computer to replicate a sense of human unity.
The only fairytale is that we need to have a fairytale to believe in. The magic is that, even when we realise it's a myth, we still believe in the magic.