England 4, Croatia 2, and the country in one room

It finished 4-2. England beat Croatia tonight, Wednesday 17 June, in Arlington, Texas, in front of a television audience that did the thing this country almost never does any more: gathered, all at once, around the same picture.

Harry Kane settled the early nerves from the penalty spot in the twelfth minute. Then the game refused to behave. Croatia, older and cleverer than their ranking suggested, drew level through Martin Baturina on the half-hour, and for ten minutes the old dread crept back. Kane restored the lead before the break, only for Croatia to equalise again deep in first-half stoppage time, Petar Musa bundling in to make it 2-2 at the interval. Whatever else it was, it was not dull.

The second half belonged to England, and to the players Thomas Tuchel had built the side around. Jude Bellingham scored within two minutes of the restart, the kind of arriving-late-in-the-box goal he has made his signature. Marcus Rashford, sent on just after the hour, finished it with thirteen minutes left: 4-2, and the breathing-out you could feel through walls.

Worth remembering what this fixture was. Croatia knocked England out of the 2018 semi-final, the last time a tournament felt this heavy. Tuchel left out Phil Foden and Cole Palmer, two of the most gifted players available to him, and picked runners and workers instead. Tonight it looked less like caution and more like a plan. The early scratchiness is already half-forgotten. Ghana follow on 23 June and Panama on 27 June, both gentler on paper, though paper is no longer to be trusted after a 2-2 first half against a team that was supposed to be past it.

The result is not the part I will keep, though. The part I will keep is the shape of the evening. Because the kick-off was nine o'clock, the tournament being in North America and the times running late, this was not a beer-garden afternoon. It was a sofa night, curtains open on the long June light, children either asleep or allowed to stay up for once. And a very large share of the country was inside the same ninety minutes together, flinching at Musa's goal at the same instant, exhaling at Rashford's at the same instant.

That synchrony is rarer than it sounds, and it is most of what a tournament is for. The whole drift of how we spend our evenings has been towards the separate screen, the paused thing, the watched-later thing. A World Cup night drags us back, briefly, to the live and the shared. If the question this paper keeps asking is what we do with the time when work asks less of us, then tonight offered one of the oldest answers, and it still works: we gather, because something is happening now, and we would rather not be alone for it.

Four-two. Bring the same again on the twenty-third.