This is already England’s second-best men’s World Cup ever even if heroic failure awaits

Here’s the bad news for England. It probably still isn’t coming home.

Tough to hear, but these are facts. It is distinctly more likely that England end up fourth after losing to Argentina and France than they win it all after beating Argentina and Spain.

But it’s also, pretty much regardless of what happens in Atlanta tonight against Argentina, already England’s second best men’s World Cup ever. We’re not sure they’re getting enough credit for that fact.

They have, as a team that had about them the distinct whiff of the default England World Cup performance (that is, vaguely disappointing quarter-final exit requiring the identification of one nationally-agreed scapegoat to carry the can for the remaining Brave Lions), already exceeded expectations.

READ: Quarter-final vibe, reliance on Harry Kane, and other things we got wrong about England

It hasn’t always been entirely convincing. They haven’t always played particularly well. But you know who else that’s true of? Everyone. You just notice it and remember it more vividly because it’s England and you are English in England. Or Scottish in Scotland. Or, for the really unfortunate, Scottish in England. There is, inevitably, more attention on it.

England have not once, for instance, been as bad as Spain were against Cape Verde. They have been only occasionally as wretched as France were for an hour against Senegal and indeed for the entirety of the semi-final.

Argentina are far more fortunate to have emerged from a far more straightforward knockout path to reach this point than England have been to negotiate theirs.

Only a truly humbling defeat at the hands of Lionel Messi and the lads can now change this World Cup’s status for England. And we’re confident enough to tempt fate like massive tw*ts here and note England just don’t really do truly humbling defeats at major tournaments and don’t look like they’re about to start now.

There are occasionally embarrassing and sometimes humiliating losses to teams they ought to beat, sure, but almost never a proper thrashing.

If we ignore as all sane people do the third-place play-off, because it’s not real and it can’t hurt you, England have lost precisely one major tournament match by more than one goal since 1988.

And even then, when they absolutely were outclassed and humbled by a vastly superior Germany side in the last 16, it would still infamously have been somehow 2-2 at the break but for an officiating blunder so startling that is in large part responsible for the technology-led path down which football even now continues to foolishly tread ever further.

That’s some record, though. When you properly think about it. England have only failed to qualify for two of the tournaments since the start of the 1990s. They have, famously, not won any of those 17 tournaments. And yet only once have they been properly dumped out, the result long inevitable before the blessed relief of a misery-putting-out final whistle.

But it doesn’t quite feel like this is England’s second best ever men’s World Cup, does it? In fact, we’ve barely even heard anyone else mention the fact that it definitely is that. Purely on the basis of the conditions, it’s England’s second best World Cup. Objectively, reaching a semi-final in a tournament outside your own confederation is more impressive than doing it in your own confederation, and this is already the furthest England have ever gone in a World Cup outside Europe.

We wonder, perhaps, if there isn’t some cut-through from the latest slice of Scottish copium. We’re not having a go at the Scots; it’s tough to see your team knocked out of the same tournament four times.

But they do seem to be deliberately misunderstanding the concept of a seeded draw when complaining that they had to face two good teams in the group and England haven’t had to do that.

Now yes, Scotland were unlucky to pull both Brazil and Morocco in the group stage. We’ll happily give them that. But that’s the lot of a team down in lowly pots. You do get more good teams in your group.

Seeded teams who have to face another top-10 in the group stage as Brazil did are the unlucky ones. Getting no other top-10 team in your group is far likelier. And do you know who was actually ranked 10th at the time of the draw? Croatia. Panama, meanwhile, were – by the FIFA rankings that are now very correct and important in denigrating the difficulty of England’s path to the last four – the highest ranked team England could have got from pot three. They were ranked behind only Norway, who couldn’t have ended up in a group with both England and Croatia already in it anyway.

The fact England have faced no side officially ranked in FIFA’s top 10, and the malleable way people treat the value of those rankings as the need arises is always enjoyable, is really nothing more than a quirk. Croatia are there or thereabouts. Mexico in the Azteca are definitely a top-10 level test.

Nobody can truly say with their full chest that at this precise moment in time there are 10 better international teams out there than Norway.

All this is to say that, while Scotland are more than welcome to try if it makes them feel a bit better, there’s not even really a way to denigrate England’s route through this World Cup. They’ve had almost the exact route expected. There has been no opening up of the draw to ease England’s path to this point.

They won their group to get a third-placed team in the last 32. They faced Mexico as expected in the last 16. It says a lot, in fact, for how a knockout bracket that produced the top four seeds as semi-finalists that Norway beating Brazil by the neat trick of simply being right now a better and more organised, coherent football team actually constituted one of the closest things we’ve had to a shock since Paraguay pulled Germany’s lederhosen down.

It may well all be doomed to glorious failure. It is unlikely England can overcome both the sheer tournament-hardened bloody-mindedness of Argentina and the elite-club-level cohesion and organisation of Spain back to back.

But that failure will still be glorious. The most glorious of any England failure in all the 60 years of hurt.

There’s your copium.