Four weeks ago, the nation was full of hope and the overpaid prima donnas we'd sent to South Africa carrying our hopes and dreams were the adorned ones.

Now, as Spain and the Netherlands – not England – contest the final of this year's World Cup, the sight of a fishy-belly white Wayne Rooney relaxing on a beach in Barbados with his missus and kid on a holiday he apparently booked before England was embarrassingly dumped out of the tournament by Germany, just makes me feel as if we've been taken for a ride.

Early on in the World Cup, one newspaper revealed that collectively, our team earns more than £1 million a week. That's around £100,000 each. And though we might have once said they were worth that figure, if they brought home the Jules Rimet Trophy, I'd think you'd struggle to find anyone in Britain who would now hold that belief.

So what else could we spend £1million a week on?

For a start, what about 1 million scratchcards? Over the year, that would turn out to be about one per person throughout the United Kingdom. Certainly, among the recipients, some would strike it lucky and they would then learn what it feels like to spend money like a Premier League footballer. Why not share the love?

If you consider that wasteful, then why not spend it on stamps? We could buy around 3 million second class stamps with £1million and they could be used to send letters of disgust to the Football Association – or your favourite England player – to tell them how rubbish they are and you hope they have a miserable summer holiday just like you will.

For the less literary-minded, we could pay for text messages. With £1million we'd probably cover around 10 million texts. And judging by the amount of texting the England players seem to do – that's how all the scandals break – it might be the most effective way of communicating our collective disgust.

But will they listen to me? Somehow I don't think so, but it'd nice to give it a try.