This time the hope died not with England losing a penalty shoot-out, or after 37 minutes of the first match, when the players’ inability to pass to each other from a range of 14 inches becomes inescapably plain. It expired on Thursday, eight months before the starting date.  In reality, there was never a scintilla of a possibility that England would win the trophy. Fabio Capello’s team at its mythical best is no match whatever for world champions Spain at their literal and absolute worst. But what does reality have to do with the psychological state of patriots anticipating a major sporting event?  So long as the solitary world-class talent in a very average squad was available, it was possible to conceive a route to glory, even if it involved an outbreak of smallpox in the Spanish camp and the German team coach skidding off a Polish mountain pass.  Technically, having said that, Rooney is available. Don Fabio could still take him to Poland and Ukraine to sit out the qualifying games on the off chance that England reach the knock-out stage.  Already in flow is a heated debate about what the Italian should do about the player universally known as “England’s talisman”. A talisman, by the way, is a ring or amulet with the supernatural power to confer good luck. If you believe this is the mot juste for a player who limped out of Euro 2004 with a broken toe, was sent off in the 2006 World Cup for stamping on a Portuguese groin, and so badly damaged an ankle before last summer’s World Cup that he was as effective leading the English attack as a bison with rheumatoid arthritis, that’s your choice. Language is a flexible thing.  To me, Rooney’s tournament record suggests less a talisman than a voodoo doll full of pins, and there it is in harmony with his country’s post-1966 football history. This fiasco joins a line stretching back to 1970, when Gordon Banks succumbed to a Mexican tummy bug the night before the World Cup quarter-final with West Germany in Leon. With England leading 2-0, his replacement in goal, Peter Bonetti, dived over a weak shot, the Hun went on to win 3-2, and the pattern was set.  Time and again since, England have conformed to it, entering tournaments with their star performers absent or unfit, and exiting them shortly after the best player was sent off. Factor in the Hand of God in 1986; the Fist of Dunce in 1998 (Alan Shearer causing a late winner to be disallowed by needlessly elbowing Argentina’s goalie in the chops); the Eyes of Wonder in 2010 (the officials failing to see that a Frank Lampard shot had cleared the German line by the width of the Grand Canyon at its widest point); and the Feet of Hawking (too many shoot-out debacles to catalogue), and this much becomes clear: the England football team is cursed.  The cause is as plain as the fact. Just as Paris doomed Troy by stealing something that didn’t belong to him (Helen), so England invited the curse by claiming a goal that was not justly theirs. From the moment the “Russian linesman” raised his flag that sweltering 1966 afternoon, we were doomed eternally to repeat the cycle of failure like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill.  Since there is no known way of breaking the curse, the question of Rooney’s selection for a tournament in which he might play no part is irrelevant. Whether he joins his confreres in eastern Europe or spends the summer doing beachwear shoots for Hello! with Colleen and little Kai could not matter less. With or without him, England’s efforts will again bring to mind a Sky Three reality show in which a group of young men who have not seen a football since school are selected at random by the national insurance computer, and given a fortnight’s training by a faintly mad mafioso before launching an audacious bid to prove themselves Europe’s finest.  Accepting this, the FA should be inspired by Rooney’s act of mercy to do the noble thing, and withdraw in favour of a more deserving nation.  In honour of their rugby heroics, I nominate the Welsh.
With England’s star footballer banned by Uefa, we will be spared our usual    bout of delusion over the possibility of winning next year's European    Championships.