Stubborn, obnoxious England fans wait patiently, but will World Cup come home?

The expatriate comes from a country that believes everything ever created belongs to them. Sport is a classic example. Cricket, for instance. The British believe that cricket was not only invented in Britain, but that it still, by right, belongs to Britain. Consequently, they get rather annoyed when they lose matches - something they historically often do.

India has a fun play on this idea of Britain's ownership of cricket, and sometimes argues that 'Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the British'.

America has also invented a number of sports and games such as baseball and American football, but, much to that country's annoyance, nobody anywhere else in the world has any interest in taking up these sports. Hence baseball's 'World Series' is basically lots of Americans playing baseball with each other, in America.

At this time of the football World Cup, which I believe is occurring in a country named for the mucus one produces during the flu, the English are, in particular, always obnoxious. This is most audibly demonstrated in their regular chant of, 'It's coming home, it's coming home... Football's coming home'. By 'home', they of course mean England, and not, say, ancient China or Japan where, respectively, the ancient football-type games of cuju and kemari were played some many centuries before Jesus.

Not that Jesus played football. Although he might have: a form of football was played across the Roman Empire, and the disciples must have found themselves occasionally bored in between their fishing trips and grateful for a good kickabout.

None of this affects the English mentality that they 'created' football and exported it to the world, any more than you can convince your average Englishman (and many are quite average) that they didn't create democracy, tea and other such global joys.

Indeed, whenever England wins the World Cup (this has happened once), they'll say that 'Football's Come Home'. And whenever they're eliminated from the World Cup (something that has happened rather more often), you get the impression that they go home to say, 'That's okay: we'll let the rest of the world continue playing our game in Qatar'.

Historically, England has been quite easy to beat on the pitch, but it's rather harder to beat English stubbornness and chauvinism.

This is where Kenya has the upper hand. Possessed of a football team that has never reached the World Cup, as a consequence Kenya can say with some pride that, 'We're not interested in that colonial sport'. They've also enjoyed FIFA suspensions and international bans. Given the awfulness of FIFA, an organization that's similar to The Empire in 'Star Wars', this should probably be a source of pride for any nation.

Although, of course, Kenya's love of England's Premier League is a bit of a problem when it comes to pretending that you're not concerned about failing to enter the footballing world stage.

But it doesn't matter. It's just a sport. Soon we'll all be back to worrying about the cost of living.