Thank you Gareth Southgate for reminding me why I gave up on the pain of football

As any fan knows, if you invest a lot in the results of your team, you'll feel intense joy when things are on the up – and bleak in defeat

Oh the sweet agony of a sporting loss. Roared on by thousands in Moscow and millions back home, Kane, Maguire, Pickford et al just couldn’t quite take England to a first World Cup final since 1966.

Gareth Southgate, who has done more for waistcoats than Dennis Taylor did in an entire career, was gallant, decent and wise in defeat – just as he had been in victory throughout this remarkable tournament.

But as yesterday’s game played out, I couldn’t help but feel thankful I wasn’t watching.

A long arranged event had brought together Independent journalists and readers, as well as an expert panel of politicians and campaigners, to discuss the vagaries of the Brexit process. With England 1-0 up when the event began, there seemed to be grounds for optimism, but occasional glances at Twitter hinted at a shifting of the tide. As the final whistle blew, Jacob Rees-Mogg and his fellow panellists were oblivious; but were soon to be disappointed.

In truth, I was not initially invested in this World Cup at all. Having followed the domestic game no more than cursorily for years, a handful of names in England’s squad meant nothing to me.

As a child, and through most of my teens I loved football. I watched it, read about it and listened to it at any opportunity. The World Cup, to me, still means Mexico ‘86 and Italia ‘90. Subsequent international disappointments – aside, perhaps, from Euro ‘96 – always had an air of inevitability. So much so that I’d begun to tune out.

I caught only snatches of England’s group games in Russia. By chance though, I came home late one evening and sat through the highlights of Mexico’s second round game against Brazil, which somehow had an air of World Cups gone by about it. The next day England took on Colombia – and as the country came to a halt I found myself glued to the box.

The game was exciting of course; too exciting, with Colombia’s equaliser almost vomit-inducingly grim. The penalty shoot out was edge-of-the-seat, jump-in-the-air, shout-at-the-telly drama; its successful conclusion a cathartic antidote to all those penalty disasters of the past.

The joy of that victory felt unconstrained. And yet... and yet... and yet. I had a nagging feeling, a memory – not of penalty shoot outs, not of past victories, but of stress.

I had more or less given up on football by the early 2000s. That was in part because the Premier League felt different: more money, less loyalty – great players still, but fewer great stories – Leicester City’s success in 2016 and England’s performance in Russia were both notable because they busted that narrative, however briefly.

But the way I felt during the penalty shoot out against Colombia reminded me I didn’t fall out of love with the beautiful game purely because it had become moneyed and lost its romance. I also got fed up with the way my mood was determined on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon – or on a midweek evening – by whether Manchester United (yes, I know, glory-hunter, spoiled by success, blah, blah) won or lost.

As every football fan knows, if you invest a lot in the results of your team, you will feel both intense joy when things are on the up and, when defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory, total, wretched pain. It can make a weekend or it can ruin it. I didn’t want to live like that any longer.

Briefly, during that shoot out against Colombia, I became lost in the energy of the performance, devastated by Jordan Henderson’s miss then ecstatic after Jordan Pickford’s heroics in goal. And of course I would have loved England to win the World Cup. But even before last night’s semi final I had resolved not to devote excessive emotion to the outcome.

So, to Gareth Southgate, I thank you. For being decent; for creating a team that played with style and heart; but also for reminding me why getting wrapped up in football just isn’t, in the end, worth the pain.

From now on I’ll stick to cricket.