There was a moment, somewhere in the eleventh minute of stoppage time at the Estadio Azteca, when John Stones prodded the ball agonisingly wide of his own goal and 80,000 Mexican voices collectively held their breath, then exhaled into something approaching delirium. England, ten men, altitude, a hostile crowd, a one-goal lead and the entirety of Mexican football history pressing down on them. They held.
This was not the England of comfortable Sunday afternoons. This was something rawer and more interesting - a team pushed to the absolute limit of what collective resolve can sustain, and finding, to their own evident surprise, that the limit was further away than anyone had imagined.
The game began an hour late, a thunderstorm having decided that the occasion required additional drama. When it finally started, Mexico came strong - organised, purposeful, electric with crowd noise. And then, in the space of 98 seconds, Jude Bellingham dismantled everything. First a header from Saka's cross, then a composed finish from Kane's perfectly weighted pass. Two goals. Ninety-eight seconds. The Azteca fell temporarily, disbelievingly, silent.
Bellingham was the last player to score twice in a World Cup game at this ground. That player was Diego Maradona, in 1986. The symmetry is almost too neat to be credible.
Tuchel's tactical masterclass lay not in those two moments of brilliance but in what followed them. When Quansah was sent off early in the second half - a decision that briefly threatened to unravel everything - Tuchel moved immediately and without sentiment. A back five. Burn and Spence thrown on. The structure tightened, the spaces closed and Mexico's relentless late siege - crosses, headers, desperation - broke against England's defensive wall like water against stone.
The removal of Kane in the final minute of normal time was the subtlest stroke of all. Taking off your captain and talisman carries risk. But the psychological signal it sent was unambiguous - England were not managing a crisis. They were managing a victory. Mexico, who may have begun calculating their chances in extra time and beyond, suddenly had to reassess. There would be no penalties. England had decided.
Now comes Erling Haaland, the anti-Kane in almost every respect. Where Kane is a playmaker disguised as a striker, forever drifting into midfield to orchestrate attacks, Haaland is the attack. Direct, relentless and almost mechanistic in his pursuit of goals, he reduces football to its simplest and most unforgiving equation: space, movement, finish. Norway will ask questions Mexico never could. But England travel to Miami with something more valuable than momentum. They have discovered an identity, forged not in flowing football but in adversity. Whether that identity is strong enough to contain one of the world's most devastating centre-forward is the question that now matters.