England hit new low with display far too bad to be boring

Such was the amusing ineptitude from both sides this felt like a Woolworths football blooper video

- Jonathan Liew

So you probably already watched that, which means that if you're still reading this you're either a masochist, a sadist or a Scot. Is it really worth kicking this twitching corpse any further? Of course it is. We may have lost two hours of our lives, but in return we have gained five days of rich, delicious discourse. England: proudly taking with one hand and giving with the other since autumn 1966. Fingers on temples. Let the bloodletting begin.

And what was most immediately arresting about this performance was that it tasted a little different to the usual tournament gruel. Normally when England draw against a smaller nation in the group stage - think the United States in 2022, Scotland in 2021, Russia in 2016 - they are more guilty of being boring than bad, lacking in inspiration and invention rather than possessed of any particular malignance.

But this was a performance that was actually too bad to be boring, a performance that actively courted our disapproval, a thin gruel laced with rat poison and carpet tacks.

There were enough moments of amusing ineptitude on both sides to engage and titillate the neutral: Declan Rice passing the ball straight out of play for a corner, Marc Guéhi almost gift-wrapping Denmark a winning goal, Victor Kristiansen essentially forgetting that Kyle Walker existed.