It was not a night when Thomas Tuchel’s England set the pulses racing. The new head coach had talked about the need for cut and thrust, for excitement. He was eager to ignite something at the beginning of the road to the 2026 World Cup. Instead, it was one for the more prosaic values – professionalism and control; hard work, especially without the ball.
There was the basic ingredient of a victory on what was a showpiece occasion for Tuchel, however flat it might have felt for long spells. Together with one glorious individual story and a much more familiar one.
