Miguel Delaney

I think that's where there's a kind of a real potential hinge moment in this World Cup.

I mean, in the wider context was obviously it's better for a team to look good for a long time going into the tournament because of what that says about them.

But also with England, the long issue has been none of this actually matters until you get to that first big game against a major side.

That is the actual test.

That's what he needs to build for because they're going to win most of these games anyway.

And on that, I was in Belgrade in September with what felt a bit of a transformative moment for England when they absolutely trashed Serbia.

And I thought that was impressive at the time.

Serbia's performance in that group made that seem less impressive.

And funnily, only this week, Serbia got trashed 5-1 by Mexico, who England couldn't beat in the Azteca in what could be a proper World Cup match in the last 16.

It's actually one of the reasons, I must say, personally, for very personal reasons, I want England to top the group because that means I do get the chance to go to the Azteca, whatever that represents.

Yeah, yeah.

But actually, but on that as well, I mean, because this is the first tournament after extended European campaigns on top of an expanded World Cup, a lot of the major players are going to be exhausted.

And I do wonder whether that creates a bit of an opening for teams like Mexico with home advantage, for Japan, for Senegal, who don't necessarily have the same volume of minutes among their squad, but go in fresher.

And we saw in the last World Cup, Luis Enrique is now one of the most, probably the most celebrated coach in the world right now.

He was the manager at the World Cup for Spain last year, and they get beaten by Japan.

Same with Hansi Flick with Germany.

So I think that's another potential fraction of this World Cup, where the size of it has an effect.

Because I've been thinking about this a lot in the context of US 74, which was mostly a festival of attacking football.

Even in that, like, Paul Howard had a line the other day about Spain 82 and how you could kind of sense the vitamin D off the television.

It was a bit like that with US 74.