England’s hopes take off on a day to savour

There have been so many times when England were such a tactically flat, stressed-out bunch who could squeeze the joy out of battering even the meekest opposition that against Panama you had to rub your eyes at the general levels of fun being had.

This was England as we rarely see them, the game won in the first half, a place in the second phase claimed with a match to spare and a general feeling of abandon that anything could happen. Harry Kane notched only the third World Cup hat-trick in English history, and there was an unfamiliar competence observed on the basics of the game, especially two set-piece goals created for John Stones that demonstrated actual planning.

Everything that could go right did, although it never felt lucky, and they chuckled at Kane’s third goal, which ricocheted off his heel while he was looking the other way. Somewhere in the Moscow outskirts, one could only guess at the disdain Cristiano Ronaldo will have felt at being supplanted as the tournament’s top scorer in that manner.

This was England’s biggest World Cup win but it was also World Cup football as enjoyment, rather than the usual torture.

Gareth Southgate conjured up a vision of barbecues ablaze, televisions repositioned and boozy roars across back gardens when he said he was glad to have delivered goals for a public watching at home on a “warm Sunday afternoon”.

Out in the scorching midafternoon in Nizhny Novgorod, an industrial goliath east of Moscow, England looked strangely at ease in a foreign land: with the heat, with the pressure of being the favourites, with the rhythm of tournament football. They once got to half-time against Andorra in Barcelona in a Euro 2008 qualifier without sticking a goal past the part-timers of the ski-resort nation, yet this time they had buried the first within nine minutes.

Later, the Panama coach would excuse his players their tactical naivety and relentless corner-routine grappling by proclaiming that the nation had made history with their first World Cup goal from substitute Felipe Baloy. “We are virgins!” Hernan Gomez said. “We have been born before the due date. We are debutants. We have to celebrate what we have done.” Yet the team ranked 55th in the world edged out the United States on their way to qualification.

What mattered was that the performance was good from England, and the greediness with which they helped themselves to five goals before half-time showed a little frisson of pleasure at being the bullies for once. Southgate called it “ruthlessness” and there was something very smart about how Stones swept through the pack unmarked to head in the first while Panama stuck doggedly to their game plan of trying to spear-tackle Harry Maguire at every dead-ball situation.

Southgate credited his strikers’ coach Allan Russell for the finessing of set-pieces and the Scot has done good work, especially with the fourth, which was worked back and forth across the box before Stones nodded in his second. Jesse Lingard won the penalty for Kane’s first, and curled in the third after an exchange with Raheem Sterling.

Kane won his second penalty himself just before half-time, with Anibal Godoy trying to coerce him in the penalty area with all the subtlety of a new pub landlord breaking up his first fight.

Both Kane penalties were dispatched with a viciousness that spoke of a confidence in that particular art – which is also unusual when it comes to England. They went in five goals up.

Kieran Trippier departed in the second half with a minor strain, but he had done enough to underline his pre-eminence from dead balls. It was he who picked out Stones from a corner for the first, and Trippier then found Lingard before he was fouled for the first of two penalties. Southgate made a place for his understudy right-back in this new formation, and Trippier’s range of delivery ticks all the boxes.

The last group game against Belgium in Kaliningrad on Thursday, with its full complement of England fans in the Russian enclave on the Gulf of Finland, will not be the decisive match it could have been. Southgate said later his preoccupation was “squad harmony” and giving chances to those who have not played much, which will include the three unused outfield players, Gary Cahill, Trent Alexander-arnold and Phil Jones.

There is the tricky question of whether first or second in Group G will open up the better route for England, identically matched with Belgium and in first place by virtue of disciplinary record. With Romelu Lukaku nursing an injury and Kane potentially rested, it could yet be a strange hand of poker that both managers play. England have been here before, hedging their bets on the last group game, and come out the worse for it.

That was at Euro 2016, when the momentum of a win over Wales in the second group game was squandered as Roy Hodgson rested key players for the final match against Slovakia. England were pitched into a fateful second-round tie against Iceland, rather than Northern Ireland, and the rest is so many bad memories. Both Southgate and Roberto Martinez have said they want to win the game, although we wait to see.

Kane’s third goal cannoned off him, a Ruben Loftus-cheek shot that was heading in another direction, and Southgate immediately replaced him with Jamie Vardy. Fabian Delph played his first minutes in place of Lingard and Trippier was substituted for Danny Rose. This is the shape of the England team who are likely to play against Belgium. The last time England showed anything like this promise in a tournament, at Euro 2004, it was in the third group game that they lost Wayne Rooney to injury, so perhaps caution will be Southgate’s guiding light.

Even so, they lit a fuse against lowly Panama. Unlike so many of their predecessors at tournaments, England feel part of this one – scoring goals, forcing others to notice them. When he took the job, Southgate recalled watching highlights of the 2014 World Cup at a Fifa draw and noticing with horror that not once did it feature England, so meagre had their efforts been.

Already England are on the highlights reel for 2018. They have scored eight goals in two games and have the tournament’s current top striker. Having set this kind of pace, it would be a shame to see it peter out against Belgium before they embark on the second phase. They might not have the best squad, but they have some form at last and the confidence flowing from that is of the kind we have not seen in years.