FOLLOWING England at a major tournament comes with a guarantee that your emotions will lurch from one way to the other, something we have all experienced in the last week.

Even those who went into the tournament with feet nailed firmly on the ground will have had their pulse raised by victory against Croatia – a result which was probably over-hyped but nevertheless showed the Three Lions meant business.

The significance of the dull draw against Scotland which followed it will only become clear in time. We might point to it as the moment Gareth Southgate’s conservatism cost us momentum, or chuckle at the hysteria in a documentary about the Euro 2020 kings featuring Sir Harry Kane.

Or, more likely, we will feel something in between. If we are to continue the time-honoured tradition, England will progress unconvincingly for one or two more rounds before bowing out to one of the nations who have this tournament-winning thing licked.

In a way, that is where I would rather be. The mere suggestion that we ‘could’ win it is enough for me to invest completely in a Euros or a World Cup, and ignore any logical part of my brain that tries to point out the many factors which make it unlikely.

Being a fan of England is all about the over-reaction. I am old enough to remember that Bobby Robson wasn’t universally liked before Mexico 86 or Italia 90, and that the national press was baying for blood after England drew 0-0 against Switzerland in the first group game of Euro 96, following all the Hong Kong and Cathay Pacific nonsense before a ball was kicked.

Those tournaments, now placed on a pedestal of nostalgia for most football fans my age, all started with a down-note.

A steady brainwashing has occurred in the intervening years where continual highlights of Gary Linker’s near-post sweep against Poland, David Platt’s volley against Belgium, Gazza’s goal against Scotland, have all acted to medicate my mind against the negative stuff, meaning years later I can look back on those tournaments as successful times, or at the very least glorious failure, rather than what they were – isolated moments of joy in a sea of disappointment.

So, I will allow myself a moan about Southgate’s pragmatic tactics, Kane’s sagging form and the continued disappearance of Jadon Sancho, because I know it will all disappear soon enough.

I have given up caring what comes in the second round, be it France, Germany, Portugal or anyone else. We all know it’ll be a tight 120 minutes of football followed by penalties, whatever the opposition.

All I ask from England tonight against the Czechs is that you do not completely destroy the fantasy for a few days at least.

I have become conditioned to penalty heartache, I can handle defeats where I can point to Diego Maradona’s handball or Frank Lampard’s disallowed goal and attribute 100 per cent of the blame.

I can’t handle the idea that England could be out of Euro 2020 by this time next week without ever seeing what this collection of attacking players can do.

In the best-case scenario, we top the group thanks to a swashbuckling win, a la Netherlands at Euro 96. Kane grabs a couple of goals to silence the doubters, Jack Grealish and Phil Foden both get assists, swaying Southgate into the idea they can exist on the same pitch without the appearance of a black hole, and the whole first team squad dye their hair blonde in a show of unity which sparks a craze among teenage football fans. Sales of peroxide and England shirts reinvigorate the national economy and convince Boris Johnson to relax measures a few weeks earlier, reducing the tax on beer as a show of goodwill.

In the worst case, Southgate names all of his defensive players in a back nine, playing Harry Kane on his own up front, and still substitutes him before the end. Foden and Grealish are brought on with 20 minutes to go – but both are asked to do man-marking jobs on the Czech full-backs. England limp to a 0-0 draw with 11 per cent possession but the manager still draws positives from the performance, one being that they didn’t lose the game or concede a goal.

Johnson calls another total lockdown, but nobody realises, and the BBC and ITV issue a joint announcement that instead of showing the rest of the tournament, they are showing wall-to-wall episodes of Mrs Brown’s Boys.