The captain we need - it's not Wayne

So, you are asking, why did I waste a year of my life writing about four England football captains? And what is a captain, anyway, apart from being the man who leads the side out? And why do Jews like asking themselves questions to which they already know the answers?

In the classic 1960s comedy recording You Don't Have to Be Jewish, there is a sketch titled My Son, the Captain. In it, a rich young man is showing off to his parents on the expensive yacht he has just bought. He revels in the smart tailored captain's uniform he has had made for himself. He waits for the eagerly sought parental praise for the strides he has made since he left the Bronx to succeed in the world.

His father eventually pronounces judgment in a mixture of Yiddish and English. "Listen, son, bei me, you're a captain, bei your Momma, you're a captain and bei yourself, you're a captain. But bei a captain, you're no captain."

I honour the memory of my youthful hero, the Manchester City forward Colin Bell, as Jonson did Shakespeare, "on this side idolatry." Yet I shudder when I recall Bell's captaincy of England which extended to a single match, a miserable one-nil defeat to Northern Ireland at Wembley in the Home International Championship of 1972. An outstanding player certainly and a hero to many besides myself, but bei a captain, he was no captain.

So what was it about Billy Wright, Bobby Moore, Gary Lineker and David Beckham that drove me irresistibly forwards to extricate those four from the list of the 109 captains who have led out the England football team since Cuthbert Ottaway did it for the first time on 30 November 1872?

It occurred to me firstly that you can associate each of these players with a prime minister, or at least a government, because Wright went from Clement Attlee to Winston Churchill to Anthony Eden and on into the era of Harold Macmillan. Bobby Moore is usually associated with Harold Wilson beaming on from the Royal Box as Moore shook hands with the Queen in 1966. Gary Lineker's career paralleled Margaret Thatcher's time as prime minister and Beckham is Blair's Cool Britannia personified.

From a personal point of view, however, there is another slightly sadder aspect to this tale of four captains. The first two are heroes to me in a way that the second pair are not.

Billy Wright with his shock of unruly hair, his broad smile and his simple, unaffected enthusiasm, to say nothing of his baggy shorts, represented the England football of my primary school days when I first fell in love with the game.

Bobby Moore was, and remains still, the best captain I ever saw. The upright, graceful, stylish defender who never appeared flustered was the epitome of 1960s fashion. He had, of course, the good fortune to play under England's best manager and to be surrounded by some of he best players in English football history.

Aged 17 I celebrated the World Cup win in North Manchester. At 21, at Cambridge I felt the utter devastation of losing the quarter final to West Germany in Mexico.

Something died the moment that Alf Ramsey substituted Bobby Charlton in that game and it was buried when Poland knocked England out of the 1974 World Cup after a frustrating 1-1 draw at Wembley. We wouldn't be back on the world stage for another nine years.

We've had the miseries of Turin 1990, Euro 1996 and endless quarter-final exits via penalty shoot outs since then. Why look back to times before many readers were born?

I became aware whilst writing this book of the graph of my support for the England football team which has followed a downward spiral for some decades. This is not to be confused with patriotism.

I have always felt English in the way I have always felt Jewish. My sort of patriotism is a quiet constant which does not need to be shouted from the roof tops. It isn't just the music of Elgar and Vaughan Williams, country tea shops and Orwell's long shadows on county grounds. There is an entirely admirable history of tolerance (or at least there used to be) in this country that gave a welcome, however muted, to so many of our grandparents.

The distinction I wish to draw is between patriotism and jingoism. Even ignoring the hooliganism which disfigured England football for so many years there still remains the cross of St George waving from white vans like modern day crusaders on the rampage through Europe.

Every two years at football tournaments, the seemingly ineradicable belief of English superiority has to confront defeat at the hands of other countries to which we "gave" the game. It all seems to end invariably in public drunkenness and street brawls, in topless men cavorting in fountains, wrecked bars and arrests by the police.

The last few years have seen fewer such incidents but anyone who knows football crowds can sense that it is still there bubbling away under the surface. Better CCTV, better police intelligence and the banning of alcohol sales on the day of the match accounts for the suppression. This isn't the celebratory England of 1966 that still remembered VE Day.

It's probably a question of age. I understand that players like Beckham and Rooney are regarded by young people today the way I regarded Moore and Charlton. But because of the manner in which English society has evolved the very nature of football has changed with it.

Writing about Billy Wright and Bobby Moore and their times was an absolute joy. It's not only that Moore was such a great captain but checking out the players of those days on YouTube and seeing Jimmy Greaves, Charlton, Gordon Banks and the rest of them in their pomp never fails to evoke memories of delight.

In a sense it's a pointless and self-defeating exercise to wish that it was Moore leading out England to play Russia tomorrow. I know it's going to be Rooney so I just have to get on with it.

But how wonderful would it be to see that golden boy of West Ham and England just one more time and to celebrate the glory in which this country can still rejoice.

Four Lions: The Lives and Times of Four Captains of England is published by Head of Zeus