WELL it's over for another four years and the only thing worse than England's World Cup disaster was the reaction of the media.
"The manager got it wrong, the tactics were bad, what was the 4-4-2 formation about," the excuses were endless and quite ridiculous at times with one tabloid actually comparing the World Cup squad to serving British soldiers in the Gulf in a bid to stir up trouble.
OK, I get it, you are annoyed, frustrated, even devastated at England going out in such a way but I thought this one particular paper's bid to shame the national team was over the top at best and absolutely sick at worst.
You have to be extremely careful when reading newspapers about this highly emotive topic. I think only the most naive would believe that England just had a bad tournament. The French squad were barely talking to their coach and were only marginally worse than England.
So what was the problem.
Many fans have been vociferous in their hounding of Don Fabio Capello with our gutter press as knee-jerk as ever in demanding the man who got England through the World Cup qualifiers unbeaten be strung up and replaced by an English-born manager.
Lets not forget these are the same idiots from the Ian Wright school of thinking that pushed the FA into replacing a perfectly adequate international manger in Sven Goran Erikkson with the Wally with the Bolly Steve McLaren.
Now I'm not saying Capello is blameless. Certainly not. He massively underestimated the group and overestimated the maturity of his squad. Grown men should be able to amuse themselves between training and matches without slating the hotel they are staying or the manager for choosing it.
However these are very small issues when you look at the bigger picture and the 4-1 hammering by Germany underlined the perceived success of the English Premier League has masked the greed and quick fix mentality which has set the national team back light years.
Capello had tried to warn his FA bosses that the shrinking pool of English players in the top flight was undermining his options and when you look at the squad he took you can empathise.
Three goalkeepers went to South Africa: David james went with a damaged reputation and returned with his calamity tag still intact but is now joined on that list by Robert Green who will now be cast aside as an international. The only goalkeeper to have a good season, Joe Hart. was not given a minute.
Jamie Carragher got into this squad on the back of his worst season for Liverpool in a decade and took the place of the equally average Matt Upson alongside the shamed John Terry who should have focused on defending rather than mouthing off at the manager midway through.
Matt Dawson may as well have gone on holiday for all the minutes he had and what a waste of great opportuinity to blood a supposed future England captain.
And of course then we come to the non-defending full-back Glen Johnson and the bitter and brooding Ashley Cole who, as good a player as he is, needs to learn humility. All the same Cole was one of only two players who deserve not to be booed.
The midfield was just as questionable. Michael Carrick is the most average player to pull on an England shirt since Dennis Wise, while we witnessed the end of Gareth Barry and Frank Lampard as international players in South Africa.
Joe Cole was wasted (Capello does have to take the blame for that one) while the decision to put Steven Gerrard out on the left means the Italian joins a long list of managers to have wasted the Liverpool star.
Up front is the worst of all. No other country in the world would rest their World Cup hopes on a non-scoring striker like Emile Heskey while taking a big man like Peter Crouch just to sit on the bench is equally pointless. Aaron Lennon was not good enougn and seemed happy just to be there.
So this brings us to the question of Wayne Rooney - the player England were supposedly built around. I have seen this player at three international tournaments now. In one he was unlucky, the next disgraced and now shown up for half the player we thought he was.
And that is my argument in a netshell. You can blame Capello for picking the players but at the end of the day 90 per cent of this squad were too arroganr or not good enough to be there.
If Capello does go then it should be because of his inability to dump the old guard in favour of new talent. Adam Johson, Theo Walcott, Ashley Young, Scott Parker, Carlton Cole etc. We knew before the tournament what the likes of Shaun Wright Phillips, Heskey and "Dead Leg" Ledley King offered. Tell me, what was the point in taking them.
If anything positive comes out of this then maybe it will be the FA accepting that a fish rots from the head and sorts itself out. The greed culture of the Premier League has to end. Clubs must be forced to invest a lion's share of resources in developing young English players and if this comes at the expense of our so called 'greatest league in the world' then I for one feel it is a price worth paying.