By It's time now, in the dead space between the last friendly and the dream-throttling reality of the first game, to get a bit giddy.
Ignore the blunt fact of England's eventual exit and remember that World Cups aren't really about winning, playing well or even taking part. They're about being in a public place and witnessing a moment which causes air-punching, involuntary screaming and the flight of dozens of plastic pint glasses spewing amber arcs of lukewarm Heineken.
Moments like these...
10. Sturridge's Slalom, 2016
We don't need to dig up the putrified corpse of England's Euro 2016 campaign just yet, but Sturridge's 91st-minute toe-bung is an all-timer, irrespective of the Lynchean horror of The Iceland Game. It's impossible to tell if the intricate side-shuffling passes between Sturridge, Dele and Vardy are deliberate or not, which adds to its pell-mell charm.
9. Welbz Wins It, 2012
Oddly for an England game, the group game against Sweden was stuffed with fist-pump moments. There was Andy Carroll's gloriously muscular header, the moment he'd been sculpting that brawny neck for since the age of seven. If that was beautiful but slightly terrifying in its raw, sinewy brutishness, Theo Walcott's raffish little shrug after accidentally pinging an equaliser balanced it nicely. The big fist-pumper, though, was Danny Welbeck's tumbling backheeled winner.
8. Rooney's Croatian Apocalypse, 2004
Whenever Wayne Rooney got on the ball during Euro 2004 the pitch seemed to tilt 20 degrees downward toward the opposition goal, and never more so than when he roared forward for his second of the game. It set the seal on a day when the ruddy-faced 18-year-old Waz had been merrily barrelling through like a baby elephant down a ski slope, splintered bits of Croatian midfielders lying in his wake. Only seven of their team returned home alive.
7. Shearer Kicks The Ball Really, Really Hard Into The Goal, 1996
There aren't many things more satisfying than seeing someone kick a ball extremely hard, and Alan Shearer wanged this one with such venom it nearly opened up a wormhole. Everything looks slightly cartoonish. Shearer shrieks at Teddy Sheringham for the ball, waving his arms frantically. Then, the ball arrows in past a stretching Edwin Van Der Sar, who appears to be about 18 feet long. He looks like a cat who's just been picked up by the armpits.
6. Robinson Hits The Scoreboard Above The Centre Circle From A Goal Kick, 2006
A different order of fist-pump here: a pump based not in aggressive joy, but in quiet dignity. Against Paraguay, Robinson somehow kicked the ball out of his hands at about an 85-degree angle. It flew almost straight up and out of the camera's field of vision. The camera panned left, expecting a ball to drop. But there was no ball. It seemed to have escaped Earth's gravity. The footballing equivalent of throwing a kettle over a pub.
5. Gascoigne Turns The Cruyff Turn Against The Dutch, 1990
Gascoigne looks like he's going nowhere, trotting toward the byline and nearly facing the corner flag. Then, suddenly, he's six yards away from Ronald Koeman. He's just gone. Makes you wish the Shooting Stars meme had been about back then so Koeman could have been sent whirling through the cosmos.
4. Terry's Salmon Dive, 2010
We should always remember the day a man - an evil man, yes, but a man - turned his body into a projectile to protect the fragile integrity of his goal and his nation. The fact he landed a good foot and a half short of the ball in the end makes this all the more noble.
3. Platt Lands A Hook, 1990
The sight of an England player Van Bastening a ball dropping sharply over his right shoulder in the 119th minute is great on its own, but this one's especially great because the England team launches its collective pint when Platt's hoik goes in: Gary Lineker cackling with disbelieving glee at the top of the dog-pile, Sir Bobby's little samba-jog of delight, David Platt grinning manically. The man looks genuinely deranged. Look at that gurn. That's not your average mania. That's the late stages of WORLD CUP FEVER.
2. Beckhaaaaammm... YES, 2001
No, it wasn't at a World Cup, but it delivered the pure, shining, untainted idea of a World Cup in one burst. The realisation that yes, there would be a World Cup after all - that the sector of the economy built on car window-mounted St George's flags would buoy up the stock market, that schools and workplaces would be obliged to work around 7.30am kick-offs, that we could go through the whole emotional rigmarole after all - was far better than most things that have actually happened at the World Cup.
1. That Gascoigne One, 1996
Whup, flick, turn, shove, SEE YA, bang. Colin Hendry was still lying there when they knocked Wembley down five years later.
