Hey, English Football Fans: Stop Complaining About Your International Failure

I have suffered many indignities in my 20-odd years supporting the Welsh national football team. I watched as Paul Bodin's penalty crashed against the bar and cost us a possible spot at the 1994 World Cup. I was forced to endure our 1-0 defeat to Russia in the Euro 2004 play-off, and the subsequent lack of action for them fielding a player who had failed a drug test. And I watched as Vinnie Jones, a man as Welsh as jellied eels and the Northern Line, pulled on the captain's armband (we lost that game 7-1).

But perhaps the most galling insult – the one that makes me want to retreat back across the Severn Bridge and live alone in a hilltop cottage in Brechfa Forest – is when England fans complain about their own national side's fortunes. Aye, that shit really boils my cawl.

Granted, the England team is a poor excuse for a footballing powerhouse. And I don't say that with any joy: I have always supported England at major tournaments, because I grew up watching the Premier League and its dwindling band of British stars, and because I have lived here for the past decade.

Besides, the World Cup is a lot more fun when England are still involved: the pubs are packed and everyone is into football, but when they go out it loses something. A little bit of the magic dies at the exact moment that Ian Wright's voice cracks on ITV, and he dabs a tear from his sad cheek while mumbling "I really thought we was gonna do it this time, y'know."

Of course, Ian Wright thinks players who refuse an England call-up should be made to explain their decision to the parents of dead soldiers, so we can't really trust his opinion on anything, ever. But you – you English – pretty much all of you are that deluded when it comes to major tournaments. You allow yourself to be whipped into a barely-controlled frenzy of excitement that you could finally win something this year, despite obstacles like Germany, Spain, and your captain having forgotten how to play football.

Inevitably you do fail, be it with the doomed-soldier heroism of Italia 90 or the more grim, austerity-era failure you produced at last year's World Cup. And then you complain about England being shit, which of course they are (given the comparative advantages they enjoy in the football world, like having fucking invented it). They are like a child born into a financially comfortable, nurturing home who has inexplicably ended up running the social media account for British Gas. For a 50-minute Twitter conversation with Phillip in Telford about his broken boiler, there is a 0-0 in Cape Town against Algeria.

But do you know what? Getting to a tournament itself is a privilege. Ultimately you are lucky to be there in the first place. In my lifetime you have reached the World Cup semis in 1990; you played a thrilling second-round tie with Argentina in '98; in 2002 you were beaten by eventual winners Brazil, and a brilliant Ronaldinho freekick.

The Euros have been pretty fun, too. 1996. Remember that? Spanking a Dutch side that boasted Bergkamp, De Boer and Van der Saar 4-1. Putting Spain out on penalties. The ecstasy and the agony of that semi-final against Germany.

What about Three Lions? You have a three-minute pop song dedicated to the joy and despair of being an England supporter at tournament time. You get to listen to it every other summer and allow a flood of memories to wash over you, and hope that this will be the time if finally does come home, like an ex-girlfriend or Ian Wright's grip on reality. And yet you complain – are you fucking kidding me?

Yes, in all of the cases mentioned above you fell short, but you can't tell me it wasn't fun getting there. Try reaching no major tournament since 1958. While you might bemoan the disappointment of only reaching the last 16, remember that you at least enjoyed the excitement of the build up: the hope against hope that this could be your tournament, the anticipation of who makes the squad, the buzz of excitement around the opening match, walking into a packed pub of equally wild-eyed supporters, caught up if only for a short time in a stirring and weirdly tangible sense of nationalism, a fervour that the Ukip top-brass would probably like to bathe themselves in.

I am quite sure that, amidst all this flag-waving and intense conversation about the condition of Wayne Rooney's foot, you did not think about the Welsh. I wouldn't expect you to, either.

But if you did, you'd have realised that we got none of that. We sat and watched you enjoy it, getting a little vicarious buzz without truly feeling part of the occasion. We were onlookers, observers, voyeurs. We stood outside the pub peering in at the fun (metaphorically, of course. In reality we were very much inside the pub). Sure, I sort of enjoy Three Lions, but the whole song is built around a folk memory that I don't even have a right to. I don't think much of World In Motion, either. Whereas Gazza's tears are cultural oceans for you to swim in, to me they are just a man from the North East having a cry. I could see that en masse if I turned up at any game involving Newcastle or Sunderland.

Complaining about England being shit is like going to a party, having loads of fun, and then whinging that you have a hangover the next day. The agony and the ecstasy, right? Have you ever taken ecstasy and not suffered at least a little agony? You don't get the good without the bad. Only one team every four years gets to win the World Cup and it won't be you again because you have sold off your domestic game in exchange for the glories of a truly global Premier League. So you get to watch Sergio Aguero and Alexis Sanchez every weekend, but you'll never see Rooney lift an international trophy. Deal with it.

Honestly, you have no idea what we've suffered through. You can't even begin to imagine how numbing the whole thing has been, or what a weight was lifted when we finally qualified for Euro 2016 last weekend. I love you, England, because I live in you and you're full of great things and places and people, as well as a lot of shit things and places and people that make the good stuff seem even better. But please, when the inevitable quarter-final defeat to Germany comes at next summer's Euros, shut up and join us in being happy to be there. Just because you're not enjoying yourselves doesn't mean you should spoil it for the rest of us.

@jimmy_weeks