There is a youthful optimism surrounding this England team – and not just on the pitch

WEMBLEY STADIUM, LONDON — There’s something you notice when watching England games at Wembley: the pitch of the crowd noise. At Premier League matches, cheers are gruff and throaty. As the price of tickets has risen, so too has the average age of season ticket holders. The Football Supporters’ Federation reports that it is now well over 40.

For England at Wembley, with initiatives to welcome families and children at reduced prices, those cheers are several tones higher. When Harry Kane’s name was read out before kick-off, the sound was closer to boyband concert than Premier League match.

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In this new England age, that change of tone feels metaphorical as well as literal. If the rough and tumble of the Premier League is increasingly Very Serious Business, the rise of this England team with youth at its nucleus is a wonderfully refreshing anecdote. Fail to enjoy this group of players maturing on the job, and there is something wrong with you.

New wave

We are still waiting for “after the Lord Mayor’s show” syndrome to kick in for Gareth Southgate. A World Cup semi-final was followed not by a vacuum where the buzz had once been, but a stirring run to the Uefa Nations League finals this summer. Those glorious victories over Spain and Croatia have been followed by yet another new wave of optimism. England used to take entire generations to build up this much public goodwill.

Of course the football matters. England’s opening goal on Friday evening was served still dripping with Manchester City’s style. Harry Kane dropped deep and played a magical pass between the lines. Jadon Sancho composed himself before playing the perfect ball across the face of goal. Raheem Sterling finished in the six-yard box in what is quickly becoming his poaching forte. Every member of Southgate’s new front three, in perfect unison 24 minutes into their first start together.

England’s attack is not rampaging. There is light and shade, fast and slow. England lull teams into a false sense of security with slow passing in midfield and they are even brave enough to invite pressure onto them. Before you know it, several gears have been skipped and Sterling or Sancho or Rashford or Alli or any one of four or five other players has lost his man and found some space. Space equals time equals danger.

Identity

But it is the identity of those producing the football that matters as much as the football they are producing. In the dugout before the game, a young England fan was interviewed and chose Sancho as his favourite player. Sancho became the third youngest England player to start a competitive international at Wembley, behind only Duncan Edwards and Michael Owen. That is the reward for having the courage to turn down a new contract and Manchester City and go abroad in search of regular football. He backed himself and he was right to.

And then there’s Sterling, now one of the form players in world football who has used the criticism and hate as fuel and become a role model when his only responsibility is to be good at football. A first England hat-trick might have come with several touches of fortune (offside, rotten defending and deflection), but his rise hasn’t.

Sterling is a role model by example, drive and ability. Doubt him? Dig him out? Put that in your pipe and smoke it. He was booed by England supporters less than three years ago, but his substitution on Friday provoked a standing ovation at Wembley. That achingly long goal drought now seems an awfully long time ago.

But Sterling and Sancho are just two of many. By full-time, Southgate’s XI included Ben Chilwell (21), Declan Rice (20) and Callum Hudson-Odoi (18). England’s manager has a strength in depth and strength in youth that is the envy of many of his peers, and he made it happen by giving them a chance and urging them to seek regular football.

Nights like these used to be dreary necessity, like a childhood trip to a distant relative or a three-hour work meeting on a hot Friday afternoon. Now England supporters walk along Wembley Way to watch qualifiers not with the drudging march of those conscripted to war, but in excitement at witnessing the next new chapter.