I didn’t know if England had this in them – how wrong I was
England may have beaten better opponents and have certainly had more glamorous nights, but there can be few that their players and travelling supporters will ever have enjoyed more. If you get out of life, love and knockout World Cup matches what you put in, this team is suddenly everything. It is hard to process that there could be three more rounds of this.
England suffered in altitude, suffered with a delay, suffered in the noise, suffered without the ball and occasionally suffered with it. They suffered from a red card and a penalty conceded. They were lions, warriors and gladiators to a man, the whole Roman gamut.
This is what it means!
England breathe a sigh of relief as they celebrate a massive win over Mexico. pic.twitter.com/GNYHLiv1IT
As the final whistle blew, they fell to their knees not because they had been broken, but because somehow they were still in one piece. All that running, all that fighting, all that clearing and all that counter-attacking quality.
I thought Thomas Tuchel had got it wrong. I think we all thought that he had, on some level. Defending that deep, with one less player, against the World Cup co-hosts in their own stadium, was surely asking for too much. Forget a Mexican wave; England were attempting to hold back the tide.
But they did it. Dan Burn made eight defensive contributions after coming on, the World Cup Harry Maguire for the ChatGPT generation. John Stones came on to play the hits, apart from that bit where we thought he had scored an own goal and our stomachs fell through our feet. They headed and booted and occasionally kept cooler heads and found passes to release the pressure.
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Jordan Pickford is the only one to get his own paragraph. There are times when his eagerness feels a little showy to those who don’t know him well enough, but my goodness that chutzpah comes into its own when puffed-out chests are called for. Pickford made important saves before half-time and was impeccable when the going got tougher. On the night he became England’s joint-highest appearance maker, he proved that he is worthy of it.
It might feel like a several days ago now, but if the game was defended in the trenches it was won on the catwalk. What initially appeared to be a safety-first mentality was a trap for Mexico. England twice went through the gears and exactly, perfectly, created goals. They were curated an they were beautiful.
Jude Bellingham was the scorer of them both. His ability to be England’s right man in the right place with the right action is unerring and I love it more than almost anything I ever have following this team. He was still the last one sprinting and the first to congratulate every teammate. Let the doubt be forever evaporated, for it should never have existed in the first place.
Harry Kane did Harry Kane jobs which means being understatedly brilliant, winning the crucial header for one goal and burying a penalty in the fiercest atmosphere he must ever have experienced. A deserved word too for Anthony Gordon, who produced the best performance I’ve seen in his career with and without the ball. England aren’t in the quarter-final without his dashing runs.
We can be too quick to overlook intangible strengths: passion, courage, desire, comradeship. They become a little parodic in the wrong hands, cartoonish symbols of hyperbole. They shouldn’t. These players adore playing for their country because they know it comes with honour and responsibility. To all those who bleat about singing an anthem or try to divide us based upon discrimination, show them those 107 minutes.
And, for all that the above picks out individuals, it was the greatest team effort in overcoming short-term adversity that I can remember an England team ever producing
It’s only one game. One more step along the road.
But to overlook its meaning is to miss out on some of the spectacle and the glory. I’ll happily concede that I didn’t know if a Thomas Tuchel England team had this in them. I’ll concede too that there were at least 37 points of that match when I thought our race was run despite us never trailing.
They did it. They backed themselves to do it their way and they pulled it off. This was one of the World Cup displays by England, nostalgic montage fodder for the ages. It was a landmark night for a new era, a new-ish manager and some decidedly traditional principles.
Two hours after full-time, many in England were getting up for work. Not over here. Not in World Cupland. Please don’t take us home.
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