If the thrill of watching England win in Mexico will form an abiding memory of this World Cup, so will the leaving the following day.
The grace with which the co-hosts accepted their defeat was profoundly moving and maybe a little unexpected.
‘Thank you for coming and I hope England win the World Cup,’ was the message at Mexico City airport check-in.
And it was not a lone voice that day.
England are leaving a mark on this tournament and, after years of suspicion and indifference from overseas hosts, it’s a good one.
Thomas Tuchel’s team have arguably the tournament’s best player in Jude Bellingham and the outstanding number nine in Harry Kane. They also have a charismatic manager who does perspective in a manner from which others could learn.
England are just three World Cup games away from making this the summer of our lives
Gianni Infantino’s FIFA have tainted the tournament with shameful self-interest and meddling
And England are still England. There will always be cachet wherever they play. Now, happily, it comes free of the moronic fringe that once followed our national team to big summer events. The England supporters in America are here for the football and nothing else.
So now stands opportunity. At a World Cup that FIFA has seemingly done its utmost to defile and dismember, Tuchel and his team have a week or so in which to make sure we remember this as the summer of our lives. We have waited a while.
Football has already won in America, Mexico and Canada.
Goals, drama, excitement and underdog stories have been laid before us while in the background the organising body has chiselled, snivelled and wriggled like only FIFA can.
There is a theory if not a known reason about why England made representations to FIFA about Jarell Quansah’s sending off against Mexico and it’s an obvious one.
Thanks to that dismal presidential duo Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino, the USA team had already showed the world that red cards don’t always mean what they once did.
So it was a rather gratuitous move that rightly failed but the FA were, quite understandably, making their point: If they can do it, why can’t we?
Egypt, too, were within their rights to claim following defeat by Argentina that FIFA and their appointed referees simply wanted Lionel Messi to remain in the competition a while longer.
This, quite simply, is the low bar for suspicion that FIFA have set for themselves.
Infantino and his grim mob make no secret of the fact they want the star names here. That’s why Cristiano Ronaldo had a suspension scrubbed post-qualifying and indeed why Messi’s Inter Miami were shoe-horned into last summer’s Club World Cup even though they hadn’t met qualification criteria.
Are FIFA bent? Well they certainly wouldn’t pass a spirit level test. No lawyer will succeed in a defamation claim over that short sentence.
FIFA’s decision to suspend Folarin Balogun’s red card ban was rightly met with backlash
FIFA twist and bend the rules of their own competitions to suit agendas that have nothing to do with actual sport.
That – in its own way – is a form of organised corruption. Not necessarily for financial gain – although we could talk that one through for a while – but for reasons that serve their own wants and needs and nobody else’s.
Yes, FIFA have left a deep stain on this World Cup and should be ashamed of it. It is one that will follow them to the 2030 version in Spain and Portugal and certainly beyond to the rigged vanity project that will be the Saudi World Cup in 2034.
We see FIFA. We know what they are. But tomorrow we will sit and watch Tuchel and his players carry our hopes and our dreams into a north European struggle with an equally likeable Norway team.
And while they do that, nothing else will matter.
After the anthems have finished, the sport will become the sport and that is the intrinsic and unshakeable beauty of it all.
England have not played their best football in America and Mexico but they are still alive and as such have room to grow. It’s not how you start a tournament that matters but how you finish.
This is an honest and talented England team. It is one with roots in a Premier League that remains the biggest draw in domestic football and one that on the whole has shown itself to be above some of the fakery and gamesmanship that has infected some other teams out here.
It is also an England team that has it within its powers to win this World Cup. There is only one outstanding team in the tournament and France – exceptional again in beating a good Morocco team on Thursday – are not in England’s half of the draw.
Thomas Tuchel’s team have it within their power to win the World Cup – now it is up to them
Tuchel’s team will have to play better than they have. They will certainly have to defend better. They will have to manage big moments and, unfortunately, get the right side of some the VAR inconsistencies that have blighted the knock-out phase of this tournament.
There remains an increasing and uncomfortable possibility that one of those decisions may yet decide who goes home with the trophy next Sunday in New Jersey.
But glory and all that comes with it now sits within England’s grasp. None of it looks or feels impossible.
Three games to go. Three steps to heaven. Three victories to make sure that World Cup 2026 is forever associated on these shores with something much deeper and more profound than anything dreamed up by the wretched Infantino and his dreadful friend in the White House.
