Questions That Need to Be Answered By the End of the European Championships

First thing, and no fucking about here: Four Lions is a banger and it is right up there with "Three Lions", "Three Lions '98" and "World in Motion" in the canon of pro-England pre-football tournament songs, and for that reason and that reason alone – i.e. England finally having an absolute banger of a pre-tournament song, with a video which is essentially "four dads shared a pill and somehow ended up on a JD Sports advert shoot" – England will win; England are going to win the tournament. No, no, I won't hear it. I won't hear any other opinions on this.

Anyway, we're all excited for Euro 2016, aren't we? Football. Lads. Goals. Celebrations. A stirring, droning sense of heavy patriotism. If there were a way to track English patriotism – the internal love for the Queen that people constantly have or do not have, a dormant feeling that only glows hot when Wayne Rooney scores an 86th minute toe punt to settle a tricky group stage tie 1-0 – then the graph would uptick absurdly over the course of international tournaments. We only really love this country when it is bravely failing to win international tournaments. Sporting underachievement is what keeps us real.

But I, like you, have some questions I want answering over the upcoming European Championships. Not sporting questions, though. We have an entire sports website for stuff about throw-ins and pass accuracy. I have real questions:

In 2004, Wayne Rooney scored four goals at the European Championships and ascended instantly to the title of "Most English Man Alive", mostly due to the very nature of Wayne Rooney – he's very "fried breakfast on a beach in his sandals", isn't he? It's not hard to imagine Wayne Rooney getting agitated in a queue at Thorpe Park, growing puce and angry in the sun. He's the quintessential paunchy English dad; close your eyes and imagine Wayne Rooney silently unloading the Astra after a big shop; Wayne Rooney eating chips alone in the car before going home for his actual dinner; Wayne Rooney paying a ticket tout for Kasabian tickets right outside Wembley; Wayne Rooney's Collection of Superdry Jackets – because this is what we do, in England: we look and assess who is the best and most iconic player of a generation, and elevate them far beyond their actual talent to a pantheon on which we can worship them, and hold them up as a pinnacle of Englishness, and then tear them down when they fail. We create false gods and grow frustrated when they prove themselves to be mortal.

So anyway, with Rooney's powers on the wane – he is 30 years old now, but not 30 in the same way other footballers are 30, 30-year-old Wayne Rooney somehow looking more 35, 36 – we need a new ascendant. And, basically, it's not going to be Adam Lallana, is it? The only possible candidates are Harry Kane (strong solid British lad, strong solid no-nonsense British lad haircut, seems very polite, almost visibly simple), Marcus Rashford (who is going to go one of two ways: three loan spells in four seasons before a £2 million move to Newcastle, or the best English player of his generation; no in between, and impossible to tell which way he'll go), or Jamie Vardy (who, yes, is only a year younger than Wayne Rooney, but looks like a Punch & Judy puppet who once got in a terrible accident and is now just happy to be alive, and that's what makes his nü success so heartwarming). Essentially: who is going to walk off the plane to the biggest cheers when we get dumped on our arse out the quarter final by France? Who's going to elicit a wave of millennial Gazzamania? Who are we going to turn on as soon as his form starts to drop? It's exciting to find out.

Just as we have gods, so we must have devils. We need a new Gareth Southgate, a '98 era Beckham – someone who fucks up in some tragic and notable way, where we can say, "Yeah, look, no: that moment – that exact moment – not the 90 minutes before and after it, that, there: that was when we lost the tournament."

Who is going to be booed by home and away fans on the first day of the season for having the temerity to try and win an international tournament for us? I asked a wise witch woman to consult her bundle of soothsaying sticks and she hissed, "Gary Cahill, big clonking header of an own goal, 79th minute against Germany." MAKE OF THAT WHAT YOU WILL.

A lot of the pre-tournament hype is quite dismissive to Wales and their chances, because i. they are not an established tournament team, as if that helps England at all, and ii. they legitimately have a player called "Jazz". That's not right. That shouldn't be allowed. So the expectation when Wales play England in Lens on Thursday is the same as whenever England play a rival home nation: really long national anthems followed by an inevitable English 2-1 win, and balance and superiority is restored.

But then: Wales have Gareth Bale, who is actually, properly, superstar-level good. And they also have Aaron Ramsey, who was good two years ago, but crucially – crucially – he has dyed his hair bleach-blonde, and I feel like this is the final stage in him transforming from Aaron Ramsey, 25-year-old useful midfielder, into a legitimate superhero who stalks the streets of Cardiff high-kicking criminals in the throat. Also they have Ashley Williams, who you absolutely would not fuck with. Ashley Williams is unfuckable with. I feel like I could drive a van into Ashley Williams and he'd just be mad. Like: entirely uninjured. Driving a van into Ashley Williams actually makes him stronger. And I'm just there, shellshocked from the explosion of an airbag in my face, and Ashley Williams has wrenched the van door off – and this van is rented, so I'm not getting my deposit back now – and also he is mad. That's how I die. That's how I want to die.

So, Wales: quite tasty. And if they shock England then it goes one of two ways: every person in England quietly admits that, actually, maybe we're not that good, and that winning two World Wars and one World Cup doesn't actually stand us in very good stead to win a European football tournament 50 years later, and we take the little flags off our vans and have a little sit down and a think; or we nuke Wales, because fuck Wales. It could go one of two ways! Who knows!

I mean, it's a day before the tournament even starts for England, and the headlines are already dominated by England fans doing what England fans do best, which is throwing a load of garden furniture about and saying "Oh way! Oh way! Oh way! Oh way: England!" while people push riot shields into them, so: the worst fans are going to be England fans. But who knows: maybe a load of Italian ultras will turn up and Mafia everyone to death? Maybe some Polish fans will smuggle in a load of Tyskie and flares? Iceland is notorious for its strongmen. Imagine a load of strongmen coming for a European fistfight. Imagine a load of Magnús ver Magnússon types pulling lorries on ropes down the Champs-Élysées before crushing every single England fan with an atlas stone. Cancel the tournament, just televise that.

The prospect of Jamie Vardy at an international football tournament is as brilliant as it is absurd. Jamie Vardy seems like he's that kid at your school who appears in the local paper because he got electrocuted while stealing scrap metal and now he wants to sue the council; he seems like a man who can go days without eating because he "just forgets"; he seems, essentially, like he wakes up on a sofa every day at five minutes towards kick off surrounded by half-consumed Pot Noodles and a big thing of Cherry Cola, and then just goes out there and bosses it.

There is something amazing about players who don't seem like athlete athletes – the people who are just sort of unteachably good. Cantona had it, Berbatov, Gascoigne, you feel like Egdar Davids never had to prepare for a match – and Vardy is the latest. Do I want to see photos of Jamie Vardy shouting and drinking box wine the night before an England match before throwing a lawn chair at an Icelandic bodybuilder? More than I want anything to happen in my life. But will he just mostly behave himself and maybe underwhelmingly nick one goal in one match, from the bench? Probably. But seeing which Vardy will turn up – the professional or the mad bastard – that's what's going to keep this tournament alive for me. That and the inevitable news story about how his lookalike gets publicly beaten up.

This is all he lives for, this is where his summer begins and his summer ends, this is where his life peaks before the trough. In the kitchen, chuckling to himself as you walk in. "Ah, big one this weekend," he's saying. "Got Ronaldo in a pack. Me and my mate, right, we went to this newsagent, bought him out of all his stickers. Bought them by the box. Spent £80 each. Went to the pub, England friendly, pint: get a load of stickers on. Brilliant." He leans closer. "I've got properly loads of stickers now, if you want to start collecting them." Does he have Giorgio Chiellini? "Mate: I've got seven Giorgio Chiellinis." He will be bereft when this tournament is over. He will gaze at his Panini collection – just 12 stickers away from completion, but he doesn't know any other adult men who can help him with his swaps, and his nephew doesn't want to swap with him because "that's lame", and he wears his "ROONEY 10" £60 full Nike kit, and he sits alone in his flat, and he sobs. He sobs. That man is me.

Yes, this will undoubtedly happen. Yes. COME ON, ENGLAND! Yes. Yes.

@joelgolby

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