Every man has a limit. A place they will not be taken, a line that will not be crossed, a point at which they bend and break. And as England’s footballers peeled off their smart blue training jackets a few minutes before 4pm local time at the Khalifa International Stadium, perhaps we discovered theirs.
They really, really wanted to wear the armband. Perhaps was the main thing. Indeed that was the thrust of the Football Association’s statement issued about an hour before kick-off in their opening World Cup game against Iran, in which it declared it was “very frustrated” with Fifa’s ban on the little strip of elastane that had been unveiled with such proud fanfare in advance of the tournament. On reflection, maybe the real armband was the press releases it issued along the way.
