The World Cup is well under way. Podcasting daily is taking its toll. Being knocked off the top of the podcast charts by Love Island: The Morning After is a blow, but must be viewed as a challenge the squad can overcome. Perhaps we’ll bring in a romantic interest for my much-cherished colleague Barry Glendenning.

I have watched every minute of the tournament and I’m not sure it’s healthy. It hit home on Saturday night. By the time the final game had started it all became a blur – who had played who? Which games had been VAR’d? The idea of recalling which teams were in which groups became a distant dream. Were Croatia good or Nigeria bad? I couldn’t tell.

Four games in one day is beyond the limit for normal football consumption. Super Sunday is two games for a reason. Four of most things in a day is perhaps too much. Four episodes of Peaky Blinders, four bottles of wine, four packets of Haribo Sour Mix – the enthusiasm of the first would mean nothing by pack four, a jaw-cramping, tongue-eroding world of pain. But in some ways, that’s how Croatia v Nigeria felt.

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Perhaps that’s the deal. You only really deserve Mexico v Germany and Spain v Portugal if you also inhale Morocco v Iran and Egypt v Uruguay.

The broadcasters will be afforded no sympathy by anyone with an actual job but it’ll be fascinating to see the degeneration of the pundits, as their tans slowly fade. Who will break first? Can Slaven Bilic keep up this energy for the whole tournament? How are Mark Pougatch and Gary Lineker managing to stay awake? In years to come there’ll be stories about the two of them, dehydrated after their 200th hour of broadcasting, waiting for hours to provide a sample for Ofcom. It’s within this saturated, fragile, emotional context that we approach England.

Fifty-two years of hurt. That’s what it’s been. Nothing else. Just hurt. All of us just hurting our way through our meaningless lives until we can add another year of hurt on to the end of the previous one, each hurting year more painful than the last.

The hurt follows a similar pattern. A single moment of agony. An hour of numbness. And then you have to clear up the kitchen, a collective “Oh well” ringing around the country.

But it hasn’t really been 52 years of hurt. 1967 wasn’t a year of hurt. We were the World Cup winners. We came third in Euro 68. (OK, there were four teams – really it was an early Italian Le Tournoi.) So if we’re honest, the hurt can only really have begun in 1970. So already, that’s four years of painlessness returned to you just like that. Forty-eight years of hurt. Feels better already.

And winning the World Cup might seem like a good thing. In the short-term it would surely be glorious. The BBC made a “what would happen” video at the weekend. Huw Edwards announcing the news, a World Cup winners’ plane, fireworks over the Thames, CGI trophies in front of Harry Kane, the One Show waving scarves and the Queen dabbing in celebration. To be honest, it’s enough to make you worry even about the first few months.

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Look ahead and it could be a living nightmare for everyone involved with England …

It’s June 2070, the Late Late Show with Sir James Corden is into its 50th year. It’s now broadcast directly into viewers’ brains while they sleep. The 92-year-old host’s jokes don’t quite work any more but it doesn’t matter. The man is a national treasure.

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It’s 52 years since England last won the World Cup, back in Russia 2018. Once again, Corden will be asking the same questions he’s asked on a four-yearly basis to two of our surviving World Cup heroes, Jamie Vardy and Kieran Trippier. Was that really a cross or did you see the keeper off his line, Kieran? Jamie: did it help that you had no time to think about the game after Harry Kane was injured in the warm-up? How much did it help that Sergio Ramos was sent off in the 38th minute for that professional foul on Ruben Loftus-Cheek?

Finally, after 52 years of hurt, do you think this young squad can repeat what you did?

Vardy and Trippier answer the questions courteously but not with any real enthusiasm. Corden makes a joke about the days before teleportation and then interviews a man who still uses a mobile phone.

Last week I briefly interviewed Sir Geoff Hurst. Could I think of something he hadn’t been asked before? “The hat-trick goal … should you have gone across the keeper – play the percentages?”

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Sir Geoff took it in his stride. “Probably not,” he said with a smile. Fair point. I’m not sure I achieved my aim.

He wouldn’t change history but it would be interesting to see the parallel world where England had been knocked out in the semi-finals in 1966. How would the players’ lives had changed? Sure, they would have been interviewed less often but perhaps the questions would be more varied. The band James once came on Soccer AM and refused to answer any questions about the song Sit Down. At the time it seemed a little precious but it must become unbearable to spend your whole life just repeating yourself.

So the long-term pain of that will eventually outweigh the joy for the players. For the fans who wake up on 16 July with tattoos of Gareth Southgate, the regret will come sooner.

Max Rushden presents the Guardian’s World Cup Football Daily podcast. Richard Williams is away