Do you not wish that just once it could be us. Running to the red end, jumping, shouting, waving our shirts, flouting our victory and our precision from 12 yards.

Don't you just wish that for once, the huddle of defeated bodies in the centre-circle, flat-out, exhausted, wailing, weeping, drained of energy and running on empty were not wearing the white shirts of England.

The golden generation is at an end. The era of Sven Goran Eriksson is no more. Somehow, for a time that was supposed to be so different and foreign, it all felt so unexceptional and familiar.

England, beaten on penalties yet again. We took four, we scored one; and even that was put in by a German. Well he is, really. Best player on the field though.

At the conclusion, Eriksson walked around the AufSchalke Arena in Gelsenkirchen with his heartbroken players.

He leaves now, the luckiest unlucky manager in the world.

Unlucky, because in the biggest games events always seemed to conspire against him.

Injury to Wayne Rooney in Portugal, red to Rooney here, the Shizuoka heat and a freak Ronaldinho goal that it is claimed sucked the life from his team in Japan.

Yet in another way, Eriksson has fortune (and fortunes) to burn. He will never be too harshly judged because there was always somebody or something else to blame. And in Gelsenkirchen, Teflon Sven came through again.

If only Michael Owen had been fully fit, if only Rooney had not been sent off, if only it wasn't hot, if only, if only, if only.

What will be forgotten, in this latest heroic homecoming, is the abject four games before this.

Maybe, had England performed better against Paraguay, Trinidad & Tobago, Sweden and Ecuador, there would have been the momentum to overcome the twists and turns of fate and a Portugal there for the taking.

Maybe had Eriksson not wasted several places in his squad, there would have been the wherewithal to rise above the bad luck that deprived this team of its best strikers.

Not one specialist goal-scorer took a penalty for England and unless Peter Crouch was waiting to take the last, not one would have.

England took four strikers to Germany, two unfit and one that did not play a single minute, who in age and experience was nearer to Romeo Beckham than David.

This is where the unlucky Eriksson argument ends.

As for Rooney, it could and will be argued that this young man let the side down. That even if his initial coming together with Ricardo Carvalho was accidental — and it is debatable whether Rooney meant to deliberately harm his opponent — his reaction to the controversy over the incident was unprofessional and costly.

Yet that would be harsh, too. The reaction of the Portuguese players, in particular Rooney's Manchester United team-mate Cristiano Ronaldo, was highly inflammatory.

Ronaldo charged over to involve himself and Rooney's reaction, of anger and no little disgust, would surely be echoed by any who believe there should be honour among thieves.

Ronaldo and Rooney may have to play side by side next season. That should hardly make for a happy dressing room. Why would he want to stitch up a mate?

So Rooney's reaction — to palm Ronaldo away with irritation — was perhaps understandable. It was not much of a push, certainly nothing like a punch, Ronaldo made no big deal of it and if that is what ref Horacio Elizondo sent him off for, then Rooney has every reason to feel the fates had conspired against him once more.

And before we rush to judgment, should we not also consider that here was a player, barely out of his teens who had the weight of England's World Cup on his shoulders?

From April 29, when Rooney injured his fourth metatarsal, the nation has been fed a diet of scares, prayers and medical bulletins, some good, some bad, many wildly inaccurate. In his head it must have felt as if the World Cup was his to win or lose.

Rushed back madly ahead of schedule, clearly not match-fit, he was inserted into a team that had lost its great goalscorer and told to bring football home. Is it any wonder, under these circumstances, that he was playing on the edge?

English football loves a scapegoat. In 1998 David Beckham, in 2004 ref Urs Meier, who was tormented for making the right decision. Elizondo did not do that but, even so, we cannot continue blaming every defeat on bad luck, bad weather or a bad whistle-blower.

Portugal were without Deco and Costinha, two of their finest players, sent-off in a game gone out of control. They overcame. We so rarely do.

In Shizuoka in 2002, Brazil, managed by England's bogeyman Big Phil Scolari were reduced to 10 men by the cruel dismissal of Ronaldinho.

Who won the game? Who won the World Cup that year? The greatest managers are problem-solvers. Eriksson is invariably beset by problems.

In that, he plays to the greatest of English cliches — the heroic defeat.

Nobody does glorious failure quite like England, so our football follows a wonderful tradition of narrowly failing to triumph over adversity.

Name England's greatest explorer? Scott of the Antarctic. Not only didn't he get back, he got there second. But, blimey, what a plucky chap.

Scott was of course nobbled by a flint-hearted Scandanavian, who ate his dogs and got the job done.

That is perhaps unlucky loser Eriksson's greatest failing. He came to England and turned into one of us.

Do you have an opinion or question for Martin? Email him: tellmartin@notw.co.uk