Twenty-seven months on from the tournament’s opening shots comes a point-of-no-return knockout fixture against the kind of high-grade major power
England habitually lose to
More than this. There must be – don’t you think?–– a little more than this. As England’s footballers exited the Wembley turf, as the tinny, triumphalist
music echoed around the concrete eaves, it would have been easy to confuse the after-wash of Tuesday’s 1-0 win against the Czech Republic with so many other glazed and airless Wembley dates.
Close your eyes and this might have been another day-tripping friendly against a semi-interested Switzerland, one of those nights where the crowd bolts for the tube with 20 minutes to go, an entertainment product with the all the verve and the static of a notably undercooked Cliff Richard concert.