- The Observer, Sunday June 16 2002
A surprisingly easy victory over Denmark, thanks to goals from three players - two of whom, Michael Owen and Emile Heskey, the press had enjoyed flailing over the past week - had the game tied up by half-time and opened the way for a meeting with Brazil, who are hot favourites, or Belgium, who are not, on Friday.
England may not have beaten a South American team in the later stages of the finals since Paraguay in 1986, but that didn't stop the celebrations beginning about 30 seconds after the whistle, as thousands descended on Trafalgar Square chanting 'Bring on Brazil!'
Nor did it stop the bookies - who had to pay out heavily on bets that Owen would be first to score because Rio Ferdinand's fifth-minute header off the keeper was technically classed as an own goal - making England second favourites to take the cup. Ladbroke's cut their odds from 7-1 to 7-2.
As Japanese rain hammered down on the Niigata stadium where David Beckham and his team celebrated a return to form, sun washed dancing crowds in England's city centres.
By the foot of Nelson's column, 3,000 fans draped with hats and dragons dragged their delight - and cans, and bellies, and dope - onto Landseer's lions, for the start of hours of carousing that were to be repeated across the land until sundown.
In the main, at home, the game was a good-natured affair, partly because of the diffused tension that followed the early goal, a bounce across the line from a mistake by Danish keeper Thomas Sorensen that would have him in fear of his life were he going home to Colombia.
In the pubs around Leicester and Trafalgar squares all nationalities queued to cheer: Japanese supporting England, Irish supporting England (for the moment), Swedes supporting England, Scots supporting each other, and the English cheering every touch by Seaman, Beckham and Sheringham, and every dug-out shot of coach Sven-Göran Eriksson.
By Nelson's Column, the largest flag in sight, a huge red-and-white banner saying 'Believe!', had the 'v' in the shape of the Guinness harp, underscoring the relative lack of partisanship, at the moment, between the individual countries in the UK - although in parts of Scotland it was a different story.
'Everyone's getting on great,' said a barman in Callaghan's Irish pub in London's Glassblower Street - as 'Rule Britannia' began to ring out nearby in, bizarrely, American accents, 'even though they're not all English. Yes, it's surprisingly together. But remember, England haven't lost yet.'
There was never any doubt, according to the many beaming English fans who began pouring out of nearby doors, many other city-centre pubs in the land having closed their doors a full hour before kick-off. 'The first goal... we just knew, just knew it was going to go right. You can tell these days with England,' one said.
'I've been torn, being a Swede, but I'm delighted now, - as long as we don't meet England again later,' said Bemgt Eckerwall, who has lived in England for seven years, celebrating with his wife in the nearby Devonshire Arms after watching the second goal, from Owen, who was later substituted with a groin injury but is expected to be fit for Friday.
'The thing is, I know Denmark will be happy too, strangely. There's huge respect for English football in Denmark, as in Sweden - they'll be kind of pleased to have played in this game, and pleased to see England go through. I've spoken to friends in Sweden, Denmark, who are already planning to celebrate tonight, no matter the outcome, just because of the game.'
'I though Denmark would be much harder,' said Julie Bell, one of a team of diehard English female fans dancing towards Trafalgar Square. 'It wasn't that they were crap, even, just that we were brilliant. And I don't mind the Danes. I'll probably dance with some of them later.'
The local Danes were, as ever, benign in defeat, shrugging it off as inevitable after the first goal, although coach Morten Olsen admitted he was angry at the individual errors which cost his team so dear. 'To get three goals back against the English is nearly impossible.'
The only decent quote we could find was from the most famous Dane of all, young Hamlet:
'Oh, I die, Horatio; The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit; I cannot bear to hear the news from England... The rest is silence.'
Oh, if only...
