So … can we play another World Cup, then? Can we just undo and rewind? Forget whatever it was you thought you saw in Atlanta. We’re actually ready now.

Although not, repeat not, if any part of this involves playing football in front of 6,000 excitable children, the combined effect of which was to create an atmosphere in Rijeka the adult human ear is simply not designed to process.

This was a dreamlike occasion on many levels, from its quietly farcical staging, to a relentlessly high-grade England performance and a deserved 7-0 win, all of it glossed in the moment by the striking beauty of the setting.

Rijeka is a gently crumbling Italianate coastal town, the stadium lodged up in the hills facing into the blue of the Adriatic. From the stands here you could switch between watching Jude Bellingham cruise about the pitch like a human superyacht to following the cargo ships crawling across the curve of the bay, the grey-green fade of the hills below, white towers by the shore, like a pocket-sized Balkan Rio de Janeiro.

Against this background, two key things happened. The first was an administrative abomination. At 6pm Croatia and England kicked off this closed-doors, stadium-banned Nations League game in front of a packed and boisterous home crowd with barely a spare seat in the house.

The ban was imposed as punishment for a mass fan march to the Stade de France in Paris last March, accompanied by Nazi salutes and the discovery, later, of a stash of combat-ready weapons, including “iron rods, telescopic batons and sharp wooden sticks”.

In response to this, the Croatian Football Association said no to racism here by saying: yes, come along to the game you’re not allowed to come to because of racism. A very simple suggestion to Uefa. If you’re in any way serious about making this point, just close the loophole that allowed the stands here to be filled with 6,000 children plus their designated “handlers”.

Adult Croatia supporters were not allowed in but 6,000 children were, plus ‘handlers’, but it was not a pretty sight for the locals.
Photograph: Bradley Collyer/PA

It is at the very least a confusing message. It seems to say: racism and children, this is a good combination. And given this seems to happen quite regularly, that racism is now a kind of children’s holiday event around here, football Christmas. And here’s your bonus bag of free tickets, brought to you by today’s matchday sponsor, racism.

Playing the game in Rijeka also punished England’s fans, with just a hundred allowed to make the two-hour drive down a two-lane highway from Zagreb. Although this was still a lovely place to be, with its jaunty open stands, the haze of sea, land and sky merging in the middle distance, and not forgetting the Brutalist away end, a fully enclosed steel prison cage, albeit so scenically placed you could probably Airbnb it in the off-season.

On the pitch things were clearer, as England produced a sustained and genuinely high-grade performance from first to last. They did so in an interesting way too. Often England teams can look good but flawed. Here they were tight and mobile, just a powerful, high-technique modern team. They looked like what people imagine Premier League-era England teams might look like, but never really do, a team with the capacity to take on anyone, playing like this.

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And yes, steady on there. They did all this against a Croatia team that gave a performance, given the audience, that verged on child cruelty. But who else around the world is good in exactly this way? France, perhaps. A balanced, focused England team, with Bellingham and Kane, is a serious proposition.

Thomas Tuchel fielded an interesting team, with much to like in a fluid-looking Alex Scott-Elliot Anderson-Bellingham midfield trident. And with seven minutes gone England were 1-0 up. The goal was made by Scott’s drive, Bellingham’s slick pass and Harry Kane roofing it with a zing you could hear from the stands.

England pressed busily, smothered Croatia everywhere and looked assured in their touches. And Bellingham duly made it 2-0 on 20 minutes after some nimble stuff from Anthony Gordon. The goal was his eighth in eight games for England after six in his previous 37. Bellingham just looks irresistible right now.

It was 3-0 on 38 minutes, Gordon heading in a whipped cross from Jarell Quansah, then 4-0 with another brilliant breakaway goal just before half-time, Bellingham running 80 metres to retake the ball, then crossing for Bukayo Saka to tap in.

Bukayo Saka and Harry Kane, along with the rest of the England team, left Croatia floored. Photograph: Paul Childs/Action Images/Reuters

Modric came and went after half-time, a slightly sad spectacle in itself. For the majority of his career he has looked like a little boy dressed up as a witch. He doesn’t look like this any more. Now he looks like a gnarled middle-aged footballer dressed up as a witch. He still has the brilliance, and the touch, but not in this team of old men. It was 5-0 shortly after, Kane getting his second after a good cross from Anderson, who was just too much for Croatia here. Saka got another, set up by Kane.

By the end, 7-0 really didn’t seem very flattering. And yes, yes, the opponents were poor. But the real point was the style, the balance, the intensity of England’s performance. It felt repeatable. It certainly felt like progress from the World Cup.

The final takeaway, as the shrieks died away, was that Croatian children are far better behaved at football than their adult counterparts. And Croatia does have a genuine problem here. We’re not talking cultural misunderstanding or disputed micro-aggressions. These are macro-aggressions. It’s far-right, actual Nazi-adjacent stuff, and domestic ultra culture still pegged out around white supremacy symbols and references to the wretched Ustase, the notably vicious puppet regime of the second world war.

As Gianni Infantino would say, football unites the world. Sometimes it even unites it in fascism. Filling the stands with kids is not taking your sanctions seriously. Although here the occasion was saved by another kind of punishment and by a genuinely gripping England performance.