England is taking shape as the World Cup progresses.
They got through the mirage of 6-2 against Iran, the 0-0 jam against the USA and escaped after a small transient mess against Wales with a 0-3 draw, to reunite against Senegal everything they have picked up along the way.
She found herself stuck, she saw herself threatened, but she always knew where to go, until she solved the tie with authority and went to the quarterfinals against the France of the supersonic Mbbapé with a confident lead in which Harry Kane finally scored.
Senegal held on as the match drifted down the lane of the predictable.
As a reflection of the brass bands that accompany them in the lower part of the grandstand.
They keep up the rhythm with timpani, colliding hollow logs and saxophones.
They cause a deceptive feeling of monotony, until they undertake a change of pace.
The transition is subtle.
It begins underground, while the company maintains the beat that it had, but the signal has transcended, and the tone rises, or the frequency goes up, and everyone accompanies without fail.
On the pitch, Aliou Cissé's selection follows a similar two-stroke pattern.
They live in peace while England does what they expected: have the ball, take it from one place to another trying to get the wingers, Saka and Foden this time, to find a tunnel through which to get closer to the goal.
Then,
Senegal waits unperturbed, with Koulibaly directing operations from the center of the defence.
They can spend entire championships contemplating the sway, in the same way that carnival air companies can sustain the sway.
And also like them, from time to time, they hear the signal and change their pace.
And so Boulaye Dia, the former Villarreal player, suddenly appears in the area alone with Pickford, who in one of those shocks puts out a hand that prevents a goal that seemed to have been made.
Sarr was being torture for Walker, outmatched by his right wing that time.
But England, who arrived in Qatar crushed by the doubts that she herself had cultivated during months of disappointments and maladjustments, that misshapen England, has discovered poise precisely by getting on the big stage of the World Cup.
If many times they have left the feeling that their greatest achievement was to make the collision of talents deactivate them all, now they are finding a way to take advantage of their own catalogue.
When the obvious plan didn't work, Harry Kane dropped the lead, dropped back and opened up space behind him for Bellingham to run into.
The captain gave it to the Dortmund player, who left it behind for Henderson to score.
The Senegalese fanfare did not stop even while the English celebrated the first goal.
That was the pace, and that was also what could be expected of his team: he would hold on as long as England did not shake.
But the Southgate team is already playing with the conviction of the great aspirant who also feels a certain duty to honor that promise.
And it does not stop incorporating weapons.
Bellingham deciphered the game like no one else, looking for exits ahead of Rice and Henderson when the game got stuck, clairvoyant in those tight spots, and also when he found an open path to run, always towards places that improved the lives of the rest.
As at the beginning of the 2-0 play, from a robbery of his and a gallop.
He matched the tempo of the counterattack with Foden and Kane, and the captain went on to score his first goal in Qatar, only his team's 11th in the tournament.
Until now he would have shone with three assists.
As if at the beginning he had decided to get used to making the common machinery work to then start scoring.
Against Senegal, the chief assistant was Foden, first to him and then to Saka.
Then Southgate did something routine but actually the scariest thing in England.
Already at 3-0, he began to make changes, and those who came off the bench were Rashford, Grealish, Mount and Dier, who would not have produced a very different game if they had started the game, and Kalvin Phillips, who needs filming after his injury.
In the end, above the brass bands, which continued a quarter of an hour after the end,
Sweet Caroline
resounded in Al Bayt, like when England won at Wembley and dreamed of the last Euro Cup.
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