*smug face

It’s not often I get to say this, but I was right. Yesterday I opined that England fans should not get carried away with thoughts of 1966 and all that after just two games of the 2018 World Cup, even if they were two wins out of two.

And thus it was proven in last night’s Group G tie between, effectively, the England and Belgium B-teams. It would be unfair to say Gareth Southgate’s players didn’t want to win it, but the eight changes he made removed much of the creativity that had made England's first two games such reasons for optimism. Not that we should now be instantly pessimistic, as some commentators appear to have lapsed back into, but there is no use ignoring that last night's somewhat dead rubber halted the momentum.

But, again, we're talking relatives. Belgium rested their best players, too, and clearly their indifference towards adding to the yellow card tally suggested that Roberto Martinez was also angling for a result that would see them take the path less troubling in the Round of 16. In a sense, Adnan Januzaj's stunning strike for Belgium was a setback, and Martinez's muted response said as much. What a strange game. And what a poor one, too. Arguably its most entertaining moment was Michy Batshuayi's celebration of the Belgium goal, in which he whacked the ball at an England goalpost only for it to comically rebound into his face. Typically, as football's funniest representative on Twitter, Batshuayi was wonderfully self-effacing online amid a torrent of trollery.

As for England, I'm still not fully decided as to whether Southgate's squad rotation was a good thing or a bad thing. On the plus side, his understudies gained valuable pitch time, and he saved any needless injuries or suspensions by resting his stars. On the downside, Southgate exposed the lack of real creative depth in his squad: most toiled without any noticeable impact up front; Rashford was only fitfully effective and Vardy largely redundant; even the impressive Loftus-Cheek faded from influence as the game wore on; 19-year-old Trent Alexander-Arnold showed remarkable maturity, but too much was placed on him to take set-pieces, where his delivery was poor.

At the end of the day, there were no real dramas, and it's hard to imagine that the 1-0 defeat will impact the high spirits in the England camp. And, yes, there is that group runners-up prize of, potentially, a more favourable route to the latter stages of the tournament. But even if coming second in Group G means that England have an extra day to prepare for their knockout game on Tuesday, they'll be playing a lively Colombia. Their form alone will pose a big question as to whether the England and Belgium managers' gamble was worth it. Progress past Japan on Monday will mean Belgium could, potentially, meet Brazil in the quarter-finals. A penny for your thoughts, Roberto?

Inevitably, sections of the press have laid into Southgate, such is the fickle nature of the British media. But then their argument is usually that they have to reflect their readership. The 'momentum' of success with England's first two games meant that pubs were full, the sun was shining and there was a feelgood factor in the air. People even forgot about world issues like Brexit and Trump for a few days. Good times. Again, though, perspective.

England's record at this World Cup has been played three, won two, lost one (in a game that arguably didn't matter). The team's chief scorer is still, currently, Golden Boot candidate. He'll want to maintain that status on Tuesday against Colombia, and those who were benched last night will, rather than being frustrated by England's apparent arrested development, will be champing at the bit to resume where they left off against Panama.

The intelligent, likeable Southgate has talked about long-term progress - not an ambitious tilt at the title - but the transformation of England from a bunch of overpaid egos into a world footballing side to be respected. That will take time, but you can't help feeling that, even if England go out to Colombia on Tuesday, progress will have been made. That might sound a little defeatist - of course I'd love England to go all the way - but their nadir, that awful game in Marseille against Iceland, isn't so distant in the mind that we can't extract a sense of where Southgate is having to come from. Like I said yesterday, no one should get carried away, and that means that what happened last night, and what will happen on Tuesday night and beyond, needs to be put into a broader context. That, in England terms, is a luxury, and one that Southgate should revel in.

Calm down, dear!

Exactly eight years ago today I made my debut as a blogger. And it wasn’t pretty. The day before, England had been beaten 4-1 by Germany (remember them?) in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. I’d actually missed the first half - including Lampard’s criminally disallowed goal - of that second-round match in Bloemfontein because my then girlfriend and I had been in the Channel Tunnel on our way back to the Netherlands from a wedding in London. On emerging into the Calais sunlight, I turned on the car radio. And then turned it off again. We spent the next three hours in silence. The next day I unloaded into the blogosphere for the first time. A thousand words of invective and the gratuitous use of schadenfreude was involved.

This is what England performances do to you. Which is why I’m not getting carried away this time around. Yes, it’s fantastic that England are through to next week's quarter-finals without drama. Yes, the momentum of two wins-out-of-two is exactly what they need. Yes, the way in which they ruthlessly dispatched the poorly-disciplined Panama was a joy to behold on a glorious, sunny Sunday lunchtime back home in England.

But let’s calm down a tad. England have played only the two games. Even if they are beaten by Belgium tonight (and will go through, anyway), tougher challenges await. But even before considering them, thoughts of taking it easy - job done - against the Belgians should be struck far from view. It will clearly be a tough game against, arguably, tournament dark horses, but not one without familiarity, given the number of Premier League teammates and opponents the England players will be facing, and given the intimate knowledge Belgian coach Roberto Martinez and his assistent Thierry Henry have of the England squad. Gareth Southgate and indeed his No.2, Steve Holland, can draw on their own insider understanding of how Eden Hazard, Kevin De Bruyne, Romalu Lukaku, Thibaut Courtois and others work week in, week out. Even if Gary Cahill doesn’t play, he’ll have invaluable intelligence on playing in front of Courtois and behind Hazard. Likewise Raheem Sterling, playing alongside De Bruyne in the Manchester City attack. That's assuming that Martinez plays his strongest side.

Even if he doesn't, Belgium won't be any easier to play, but tonight's tie will be the nearest to a ‘business as usual’ game that England will take part in during this World Cup. And if they play well, no matter what the actual scoreline, they’ll go into the knockout stage feeling good about themselves, and with opponents genuinely respecting them. For once. In principle, England will go into the Round of 16 with momentum on their side. The spirit in camp is, it would appear high, and the confidence galvanised by that 6-1 destruction of Panama will have permeated through the entire squad.

"There are no easy games," I heard Harry Kane slip into his post-match interview on Sunday, and while this is the most hackneyed of footballer cliches, he is, of course, correct. Whether England face Japan, Senegal or Colombia in the next round, if they progress they'll still be at the tender mercy of knockout stage fate (winning Group G could see England face Mexico or Brazil in the quarter-finals, Uruguay, Portugal, France or Argentina in the semis, with Sweden/Switzerland and Spain/Russia/Croatia/Denmark ahead should they end the group stage as runners-up).

Football is mad, unpredictable even. Who’d have expected Germany, the reigning world champions, to go out at the group stage yesterday, or Argentina to struggle like they did against Iceland on the opening weekend? Well, they did, and that should give both heart and a warning to England fans already singing "Football's coming home" after just two games. It could be, but then our hopes have been dashed too many times before to make getting them up this time - for now - even if the results against Tunisia and Panama have put a timely pep in the nation's step. As the highly likeable Southgate has warned, there is a long way to go before quarter- and semi-finals should be thought about. By all means dream, but don't lose the plot.

Last Sunday was a special day. Irrespective of what happens next, it was a joy to watch England play the way they did against Panama. The fluidity and indifference towards the Central Americans’ bad behaviour was refreshing. Kane’s composure in front of goal, Lingard’s endeavour, and indeed the entire team effort - up until Panama’s consolation goal - was as good I’ve seen England play in 22 years, not since that Britpop-fuelled, sunshine-infused run in Euro '96. But I won't get carried away. It's nice, though, to feel good for a change. Let's hope it lasts.

World Cup fever? I'll put off going to the garden centre for now...

Press Association

Normally, in the run-up to a World Cup, I'd be in the throes of schoolboy giddiness. Wall charts obsessively studied, calendars blocked with every fixture, no matter what time the kick-off, and the sun and fresh air dutifully advised that, for the following few weeks, we'd be spending very little time together. But, until last Friday, the FIFA World Cup 2018 had generated little more than a "whatevs" from me. This was largely due to it being the FIFA World Cup, with all connotations of rum doings and brown envelopes, and secondly, because it was the World Cup in Russia, a country with hardly a great recent record of 'world in motion' inclusiveness.

But, then, Friday night came around and with it Portugal versus Spain (or, what has subsequently been revised to Ronaldo versus Spain), and all seemed to be right in the world. Since then we've seen Iceland hold out for a 1-1 draw with the mighty Argentina, replete with a Lionel Messi penalty miss, the Swiss holding Brazil and, even more stunningly, Mexico beating reigning world champions Germany. For those who couldn't care less about football or the World Cup, these results in just the opening weekend will mean little or matter less. But to some of us, they mean something, and this time, have momentarily obscured whatever it was that bred indifference on the run in.

That, though, is just football nerd talk. Tonight the reason 'most' of us in England watch the World Cup - England - means that working days are cut short, pubs are unusually full for a Monday, London taxis will be displaying the Cross of St. George without too much suggestion of distasteful nationalism, and even those who might otherwise show no interest at all in football, will be tuning in. For a brief moment, England's opening Group G match, against Tunisia, will create excitement, even hope. And an awful lot of cliches. There is some belief that Gareth Southgate, the England manager, is bringing a refreshing approach to the so-called "impossible job"; there is some latent belief that the England team's relative youthfulness will make a difference, not just tonight against Tunisia but all the way through into the knock-out stages. The truth is, we just don't know. No one does. As I often quote Danny Baker, "football is chaos".

With England today, as ever, we have to put prospects into context and balance. Yes, the squad is made up of Premier League players, and many drawn from Top Six teams. That surely counts for something. But our hubris at having a national side based around players from the most lucrative and watched domestic league in the world has led to too many false dawns before. England may well have been where association football began, and may, too, be where we've produced some high quality footballers ever since, but the thing we've never been able to grasp is that other countries have either produced better players, or have produced players that instinctively know how to win things - prettily or less so. Yes, England have suffered from poor refereeing decisions and have been unlucky in penalty shootouts, but those are the breaks. And penalties, whether regarded as a test of skill or not, are still just lotteries.

And, then, there's still 1966. To put England's one and only World Cup win into context, it was 52 years ago, just 21 years after the end of World War 2 (21 years ago to today, Labour won a general election landslide, the Princess of Wales died in a Paris car crash, Oasis released Be Here Now and Elton John was knighted. And these events all seem like yesterday). The point is that, apart from moments of joy in Italy in 1990 and the European Championships of 1996, England have been - like most participants in these competitions - a distinctly average team. Realistically, we've lacked true game changers, like France's Zidane in his day or Portugal's Ronaldo, still today. Yes, England have had and still have big-name, big-wage stars, but their profiles, wage packets and expensive choice of exotic car have rarely matched their delivery on the world stage, the international football pitch. That's not because they're bad players, or they've played for bad managers. They just haven't been as good as their opposition, and in some cases - South Africa in 2010 (including the worst game of football I've ever watched, England's 0-0 draw with Algeria) and that 2-1 defeat to Iceland in France two years ago - absolutely moribund.

But let's reflect a little. England are in this World Cup. Luminaries like Italy and The Netherlands are not. Each time England qualify for a tournament, they have done so on merit and at the cost of other equally worthy contenders. Tonight's opponents, Tunisia, may not exactly be a world beating force, but they qualified out of the African group - no easy task - and, despite not winning a World Cup fixture in 40 years, will be out to frustrate England. Southgate's youngsters will disregard them at their peril. Group G - which includes Belgium and Panama - is not going to be easy, but at risk of trotting out the 'there are no easy games' trope, there are...er...no easy games at the World Cup. Why should there be? True, some teams seem to be more likely to proceed than others, but as this weekend's opening games have proven, there are no rules as to who performs and who performs well.

So, strap in, order the pizza, take the phone off the hook and crack open the first beer. We've been there before, we'll be there again. Enjoy the ride, whether successful or a disappointment. This is still the World Cup, even with the slightly bitter taste of how it ended up being staged in Russia, even with England's history of failure and frustration. Someone has to win, someone had to lose. It wouldn't be football if it was pre-ordained.