It has started… and nothing will be the same again... for the next few weeks at least.

My dad bought his first telly in 1966, which helped England to win that World Cup of course (!), but which, disappointingly, they haven’t managed to win again since. I’ve finally succumbed to new technology and bought an LCD telly, (superior to plasma, I’m told), in the hope that somehow England can pull it off again a mere 40 years later.

I wonder if that campaign that a local shop ran, promising to refund the purchase price if England won the World Cup, helped to boost sales at all? Did England fans flock there to prove this campaign wrong? Certainly, when that campaign was running we were worried about Rooney’s fitness, and were generally pessimistic about England’s chances. Then came a couple of good friendlies, and the mood has changed entirely.

England fans are nervously confident that maybe this could be their World Cup. So, chatting away at an anniversary party on Friday night, I found myself talking to England fans (funny how we, the best fans in the world – well, according to Sven Goran Eriksson anyway – gravitate towards each other) who are hoping against hope that England might pull it off, but since we’ve been disappointed so often, we are very nervous.

The warm up games left us brimming with confidence, but then our first game against Paraguay was as boring and lacklustre as could be and, dare I say it, as boring as Italian football (if any Italian fans are still reading this). Germany, on the other hand, opened the World Cup fantastically, and the team many were writing off may yet surprise us.

What makes the Germans so tenacious and the English, the supposedly stiff-upper-lip English, so emotionally weak on the football pitch, however technically brilliant they may be? Why do Englishmen play better when they play for foreign clubs than when they play for their own side? Are they as mixed up about their Englishness as we seem to be getting about our Malteseness, this country that increasingly speaks “Minglish” and loves its football – or foreign football to be more precise – with a passion that was once reserved for politics and festas? The Germans can be losing but they fight back as if they mean to win. The English need to win before they can go on winning. Self-belief has never been their strongest point, not on the football pitch anyway.

Still. Going to watch the carcade at the Ferries after the England-Paraguay match on Saturday, you would be forgiven for thinking we (as in the English) had played explosively well against Paraguay. Horns blaring, flags flying out of cars, painted faces, outrageous hats sporting the Union Jack instead of the flag of St George, while the tourists wondered in what island they had booked their holidays, little Britannia or little Malta?

Yet all we managed was a brilliant shot at goal from David Beckham in the opening minutes, which a Paraguyan footballer helped to get in the net. Beyond that, England looked like a team of tired old men, rather than the team we saw thrash its opponents in the friendlies preceding the World Cup.

There seem to be more England than Italy fans around, judging from the number of flags draped out of windows and the like. Certainly in my part of the world, in Naxxar, I am counting twice as many English flags as Italian ones, but maybe my passion is just blinding my eyesight to the Italian tricolori and the odd smattering of German and Brazilian flags you see flying around.

The local fans of Brazil fascinate me! Why are they supporting Brazil? To be different? Because they are still arguably the best team in the world and the likeliest to win at this stage? Football is not about supporting the winning side, is it? Ask any English fan who will understand this instantly.

It’s about remaining blindly loyal however many years they disappoint you, however many beers you have taken to drown your sorrows – as was the case for a while with Arsenal until Frenchman Wenger came along, and still is with Tottenham, who are taking forever to recover their past glories. You have to suffer the indignity of loss to really savour the sweetness of victory.

England fans have been suffering and commiserating with each other for 40 years. We can suffer a little longer because when we do make it again and win the World Cup, this time or next, our win will truly be… the sweetest win of them all!