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England, an apology. Football Daily and the wider English media may have previously depicted Thomas Tuchel’s lads as world champions in waiting after taking apart a Croatian team led by Luka Modric, 78, in a second-half Texan surge, but we were all so very wrong. Still, as the nation awoke following the goalless draw with Ghana, we had our England back. Tradition matters. Tea cups on the lawn, curled-up cucumber sandwiches, overpriced service stations, complaining about the weather, prime ministers departing office; familiarity is important to this nation’s psyche. England serving up the dullest game yet of the Geopolitics World Cup brought that self-same wash of familiarity. A corner of a foreign field that is forever England playing like a drain, a nation’s hopes sagging. England, our ruddy bloody England, welcome home, we’ve been expecting you.

One of the reasons that the Egyptian team beat New Zealand was that, for some reason, my countrymen were apparently so short of numbers they were forced to play Joe Bell in two different positions on the pitch at the same time. Physicists apparently call this phenomenon ‘quantum superposition’. I call it: ‘Why didn’t you ring me? I was at home doing nothing’” – Rod de Lisle.