Let’s set the world on fire. There’s a section in Bill Buford’s classic football hooligan study, Among the Thugs, where he describes being part of a phalanx of England “faces” steaming through the centre of mid-1980s Rotterdam towards some kind of meet, while their leader – the Top Boy, General or similar – runs up and down the column whispering to his men, saying the “energy is high”, “the energy is high”, “feel it”, “the energy is high”.
As it is currently for this England team, and quite clearly the players can feel it. You will probably have seen the dressing-room video, which has more than 40m views. Declan Rice and John Stones are shown playing a prank on Thomas Tuchel after the electrical storm masquerading as a football match at the Estadio Azteca last on Sunday. Rice pretends Stones has injured his shoulder. Stones plays along with it, delivering a minimalist acting masterclass so contained there is almost no acting at all, before raising his fist as the beat drops (song: Talk To You, by ANOTR) and the room falls about in generalised hysteria.
