Strap in for the wildest ride. On a night of unadulterated chaos in Texas, littered with defensive brain fades but also electrifying waves of attack, how refreshing to report that it is, after far too long, a thrill to watch England again. The exhilaration might not be shared by Thomas Tuchel, who looked traumatised at times by the looseness of his team’s performance against Croatia, but for the millions worn down by the nation’s tendency towards torpor at major tournaments this was quite the tonic.
By turns majestic and maddening, this side displayed enough frailties to fill a week-long coaching conference but also enough flair to make you believe their identity had changed for the better.
It is difficult to recall a time when England disengaged the handbrake to such stirring effect. For too long their approach at these moments has been leaden, cautious, gruelling to watch, but at the most shamelessly over-the-top World Cup ever staged they came to the party in glorious style. “Be brave, be English,” Tuchel had urged them. Well, they forgot the second part, surging forward with a level of heedless abandon that would have been unthinkable under Gareth Southgate. But they emphatically embraced the first, conjuring some of the finest passages of play witnessed from England at this level in the past 25 years.
There was a spell early in the second half, with England still cursing their carelessness in letting Croatia back into the contest twice, where the question was not how they would score but how many. From the moment Jude Bellingham completed a wonderful solo goal, latching on to a delicious dink around the corner from Elliot Anderson, they were positively queuing up to try their luck, with Dominik Livakovic forced into an inspired triple save from Nico O’Reilly, Anthony Gordon and Ezri Konsa. One after the other: there was barely enough time to draw breath as England eschewed the grim pragmatism of old, instead letting their bolder instincts take hold.
It finished 4-2 but it might just as easily have been 7-3, so relentless were England’s harum-scarum tactics. The fact that the scoreline was a mirror image of the classic between these sides at the 2004 European Championship felt significant, as England had arguably not shown such brio on the grand stage in the 22 years since. It was as if, with the game in the balance, they remembered who they were, that they had the heavy artillery with which to terrify Croatia and that it was high time they used it.
“If we see a man, let’s just go,” said Harry Kane, who laid the platform in the first half with his two goals to equal Gary Lineker’s World Cup record and then watched his team-mates wreak havoc. “Let’s just go”: it should be their credo for the rest of the tournament. Enough of the sterile leadership bromides, or the threadbare faux-Agincourt battle cries. It is long overdue for England to play the role of the great entertainers, rather than the joy-crushers who try to grind everybody else into submission. Yes, there is a school of thought that you are best served by growing into a World Cup by increments, improving with each game. But perhaps the more persuasive idea, for a side with this abundance of creative ingenuity, is to deliver a statement early.
They have achieved precisely that, with the goals by Bellingham and Marcus Rashford sumptuous enough to make even the leading contenders sit up and take notice. England have a brutal draw at this World Cup, with Brazil lying in wait in the quarter-finals and then potentially France or Spain beyond, and the only way to vanquish opposition of such calibre will be to go full throttle. Croatia might be a pale imitation of the vintage that reached the final in 2018, with Luka Modric three months shy of his 41st birthday, but nobody expected England to dismantle them with quite such disdain. Where once they could have retreated into their shells, they chose this time to fight with blistering ferocity.
They have given their campaign the perfect fillip. Doubts had begun to swirl around Tuchel after some tepid showings at Wembley, but he has shown once more that he is the man for the occasion. Just as he engineered a surprise Champions League triumph against peak Pep Guardiola, he has the pedigree to harness England’s talents and detonate a month of national delirium. This was a day to restore belief, to forget all the time-honoured grumblings and instead relish the spectacle of this team playing in a manner befitting the sum of their parts.
In the jubilant minutes after the final whistle, you could feel the stadium heave with euphoria. It was the type of reaction associated more with dramatic knockout victories, not an opening game. But England justified the ovation and all those yearning refrains about 30 years of hurt that have since become 60. It is too early to make outlandish predictions, but if you want cause to dream, consider the last time England won 4-2 at a World Cup: the final in 1966. Whisper it, but the stars might just be aligning.