It wasn’t just the performance that England had waited years for, it was an attitude.
“Even if we lose,” Thomas Tuchel told his players at half-time in Dallas, “we do it our way.”
There is so much in those few words that could yet have resulted in so much more than the four brilliant goals they got against Croatia.
There was a new ethos, and the fulfilment of a promise. Tuchel had long said he wanted to restore a proper Premier League intensity to the national side, and here it was, offering one of the best performances in the World Cup so far.
Maybe the best?
That’s a debate that might seem more trivial, but could well point to how this tournament ends up finishing.
Here, at the beginning in Dallas, England hadn’t initially started as well as anticipated.
They went in at half-time of a then erratic 2-2 no doubt expecting a rocket.
The watching world probably expected similar, given assistant manager Anthony Barry’s strikingly candid half-time interview.
Tuchel didn’t go as far as his coach, though. He was as forthright as ever, sure, but encouraging as well.
Harry Kane described it as “a great speech”.
The Bayern Munich striker noted: “He told us to ‘take the shackles off, calm down and let’s go’. He said “what’s the worst that can happen?”
There was then the crescendo, the call to arms.
These may seem like mere words, that of course always sound better in victory, but a key was how they changed England’s play.
They signalled an abandonment of caution, a will to… go for it.
If it’s going to be unfairly easy to unfavourably compare Gareth Southgate to Tuchel with performances like this, it’s undeniably true that the former manager’s time was characterised by constraint.
England were superbly structured, but only rarely displayed the adventure to open opposition systems, and almost never in tournaments. It was all more staccato.
Southgate didn’t so much throw caution to the wind as wrap it around the team.
Tuchel, as Kane intimated, whipped that off.
The team was released, to rage through Croatia in England’s best tournament spell in years.
“I loved the reaction,” Tuchel said.
It was surely hard for anyone else not to admire, which feeds into that question.
Was this the best performance of the opening round?
That’s probably going a bit too far given how England required that half-time team talk in the first place, but it may well have formed the best 15 minutes.
In that spell, England maybe hit a peak that no one else has yet reached.
Croatia could barely keep up with it. Only desperation and luck kept the ball out and the score down.
All of Kane, Anthony Gordon, Jude Bellingham and, later, Marcus Rashford and Bukayo Saka, were rampant.
Bellingham’s goal, which felt emotionally symbolic for the player and the team, best distilled that drive; the absence of any doubt or hesitation.
He went for it, just like the team.
That, especially, is what Tuchel loved. It’s why he kept Bellingham on after a poor first half.
He knew there was much more there.
And has any other team in the tournament really done more? Has anyone matched that 15 minutes?
Has anyone really matched that? Germany opened Curacao at will… but that’s Curacao, not Croatia. USA were maybe closest, but for longer rather than quite as high. Argentina were more about one player, in Lionel Messi. France were more about brilliant bursts, even though they had more tactical control.
That’s why it feels that 15-minute spell was the best spell of football without necessarily being the best overall performance.
England still have issues to solve, and there were caveats.
The midfield still needs to be worked on, with the added complication of Declan Rice struggling through an injury. It obviously helped that Luka Modric couldn’t even last the hour, an advantage that England will not enjoy against superior midfields.
Tuchel will know he needs to address that. England’s shape there was often all over the place, especially in the first half. And even after the second-half surge, Croatia began to find gaps again. Tuchel has to get that trio right. If not, it will put further pressure on a suspect defence. That may be Tuchel’s greatest concern.
He loves John Stones, especially for his leadership, but he just wasn’t able to move in the manner that has made him exceptional. Tuchel could have a decision there. England did drop off and there is the lingering question over whether that intensity can be replicated in the more oppressive conditions of stadiums that don’t have a roof.
The solution to both problems may have come in the same strength, though. Tuchel used the immense strength in depth, the “finishers” off the bench.
They may need more in more testing conditions.
They still did it here, though. They did something the country has wanted for years, maybe decades, but were never really allowed.
Tuchel didn’t just enable it. He demanded it and drove it.
The team then blazed.
This wasn’t just their way, it’s a new way, based on vintage English ideals.
And it was, briefly, better than anything the World Cup has seen so far.
Tuchel didn't so much throw caution to the wind. He set it ablaze.
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