Lightly carrying the weight of expectation, Harry Maguire and his teammates defeated Ukraine with surreal ease in Rome
When did it start getting weird for you? Perhaps it was the moment when the German referee committed the ultimate act of patronising mercy: ending the game on 90 minutes, without injury time. Perhaps it was when Gareth Southgate executed an effortless triple substitution midway through the second half, thus sealing this game’s noncompetitive exhibition status. Perhaps it was when Jordan Henderson – no, really, Jordan Henderson – scored his first ever international goal to put England 4-0 up in a major tournament quarter-final and celebrated with the impromptu fist-pump of a man who, if we’re going to be brutally honest, hadn’t remotely prepared for this moment.
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