Illustration by Leon Edler “My country needed me!” That line doesn’t often excuse a working day of near-zero productivity, but there was a special quality to the country on the morning of 6 July. We hailed one another, weary and delirious, asking: “Where did you watch it?” It was the lightness of knowing your day can be totally forgettable because the night before will be remembered forever. England vs Mexico was our moon landing. And not only because of the Azteca Stadium’s much-referenced altitude, the aerospace engineering of Thomas Tuchel’s defensive shell and the hypersonic velocity at which Anthony Gordon streaked down the left wing. It was a night when a nation stayed up until the dreaming hours and found itself dreaming anyway, all awake and all together. And this miracle of human