Tanvir Ahmed Pranto

The numbers make a compelling case. The manner of the victory makes an even stronger one. And perhaps the most telling evidence came from the beaten Australians themselves.

It has been a remarkable rise for a boy who grew up sharing a home with 25 people in Abidjan.

The World Cup remains football’s biggest stage. It just isn’t the shop window it used to be.

Pau Cubarsi did not produce viral highlights or spectacular goals. Instead, he built something every champion needs: a defensive wall.

From Monday, the flags will gradually come down. Midnight alarms will be switched off. Tea stalls will close a little earlier, and conversations will return to work, exams and the routines that had briefly been put on hold. The borrowed dreams will be folded away until another World Cup arrives.

The unanswered question is whether, when history finally presents the moment they have spent decades waiting for, they are brave enough to trust the football that got them there.

Atlanta was supposed to be the night England finally buried 60 years of hurt. Instead, it became another reminder that this country remains its own worst enemy.

Footballing immortality had been within touching distance. On a sweltering afternoon in Dallas, it slipped away.