'England have a squad full of brio and talent, a squad more exciting than the one they took to South Africa'. Photo: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images

We have reached the point where men become desperate. Diego Costa might not be spending his time before Spain's opening game in the company of the "miracle doctor" Marijana Kovacevic as he did before the Champions League final, but there is still the opportunity for all-out panic.

Kovacevic uses horse placenta – "no animal parts, no injections", was the glowing testimonial from Yossi Benayoun when he visited Kovacevic in Belgrade some years ago – as part of a well-rounded treatment schedule, but if it failed to get Costa fit for the Champions League, it doesn't mean it won't work on someone else in the next few days.

In 2002, David Beckham slept in a hypoxic tent to accelerate his recovery from a fractured metatarsal and by the time the World Cup came round, he had recovered sufficiently to jump out of a tackle in the quarter-final against Brazil.

Anxiety encourages a sort of open-mindedness. Of course we smile when a Ghanaian witch doctor announces that he is responsible for Ronaldo's injury, but it is easy for us to laugh. In Portugal they might believe the gods have found a way to mock their troubled land once again. Ronaldo – driven by that vulnerable cocktail of overweening narcissism and a pained incomprehension as to why bad things always happen to him – is likely to believe nothing else.

Who else but a witch doctor could deny him the opportunity on this stage? Human weakness is unlikely to be at fault and, on the basis that once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth, Ronaldo must look at the words of this gloating witch doctor and ask why anyone would be so cruel.

In this regard, at least, the World Cup retains its capacity for awe. For some countries, it holds more fear than for others and for a country like England, tournaments of any kind are an alien, uncolonised land and penalty shoot-outs a succubus.

England have entered this World Cup with a stubborn refusal to comply with the stereotypes. "Can we win it?" they will ask Roy Hodgson but with an ironic tone. Hodgson, too, will remove any lingering sense of triumphalism with an answer that takes us down the blind alleys of sub-clauses and the scenic route of the conditional before tetchily wondering why he was asked the question in the first place. In 2014, Roy Hodgson is England's best hope and their greatest threat. Perhaps it is no surprise that England enter the tournament full of humility and with realistic if not pessimistic expectations. This, we can say, is entirely down to Hodgson because England have a squad full of brio and talent, a squad more exciting than the one they took to South Africa four years ago.

This vigorous and gifted group of players benefit from the lowered expectation compared to four years ago and this is Hodgson's genius. He is a self-fulfilling prophecy, a man who, if he hadn't made lowering expectations a conscious part of his job, would do it by simply being. Hodgson is exactly what England needed.

Of course, he is exactly what they don't need as well when they have this group of talented players who are ready to play and will have to please a coach who is temperamentally devoted to building teams which don't play.

Hodgson's role in creating this new England is also a challenge to those who have always stated that they want England to lose because of this triumphalism. Hodgson's evolution of England has turned this notion into something of a cliché and a cliché which doesn't even have the benefit of being accurate.

If they can overcome Hodgson then England may have to face their fear of the penalty. This great neurosis is explored in my friend Ben Lyttleton's new book Twelve Yards which offers solutions to England's problems from the penalty spot but is also a remarkably detailed study of why penalties are so compelling.

When the 1994 World Cup final was decided on penalties, one sportswriter wrote: "Imagine listening to Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass debate for two hours and then having them step down from their podiums to decide a winner on belches." Sepp Blatter promised that it would be "the very last" final to be decided on penalties, explaining that "football is a collective sport, while penalties are an individual skill".

Now we see penalties as something different, cruel and unusual punishment undoubtedly, but a psychological test loved by all disinterested parties.

In England, they feel differently. Lyttleton's book goes into remarkable detail in an attempt to find a solution, to do for England and penalties what Freud wanted to do for the human condition by transforming neurotic misery into normal human unhappiness.

There are many suggestions. Dave Brailsford would not only elect the kickers but he would tell them where to kick it, removing the burden of making a decision from the kickers. Football has advanced from the time when penalties were taken by those who 'fancied' it.

Of course, the neurotic misery begets more misery and England are cursed by their own failures and England's defeats, as the book details, make them more likely to lose again. "Trauma has no true opposite concept," a study quoted by Lyttleton points out.

For this reason, England see penalties as something to be endured. Perhaps the most glorious statistic in the book is that England have the fastest reaction times once the referee blows his whistle signalling the player is free to take a penalty. The penalty taker can wait as long as he likes, within reason. The reaction time of an England kicker is 0.28 seconds. Usain Bolt's reaction time, Lyttleton points out, is 0.17 seconds.

This year, it could be different. In an ideal world, Hodgson would step off the team coach in Manaus where a Hank Scorpio figure, an Alec Baldwin to Hodgson's Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glen Ross, would guide him away by the elbow, whispering, "I'll take it from here, Roy". Hodgson's work would be done. England no longer expects.

dfanning@independent.ie

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