England’s first game after the 2022 World Cup was a 2-1 win away over Italy. Their first game after the 2018 World Cup was a 2-1 defeat to Spain. Their first game after the 2014 World Cup was a 1-0 friendly win over Norway – and that was not the Norway of Erling Haaland, Martin Ødegaard and Antonio Nusa but of Joshua King, Håvard Nordtveit and Tarik Elyounoussi.
The first game after the 2010 World Cup was a 2-1 friendly win over Hungary. The Italy and Spain games perhaps had their appeal, but the sense of anticlimax was palpable. It’s inevitable, of course: how can a side or its supporters pick themselves to go again after the unparalleled drama of a World Cup?
Major tournaments, whether a team does well or badly, are sport played with maximum emotion; there cannot be anything except a comedown, whether after glorious victory, thrilling defeat or ignominious exit. Which is why the Nations League is such a boon. It is not a meaningless friendly, instantly forgotten amid the squadrons of paper airplanes swooping down from the bored masses at Wembley.
It is not the start of a qualifying process for another, distant tournament. It matters as much as a team decides it does. A manager who wants to experiment can do so, safe in the knowledge that nobody will become too distraught about results.
But equally there is a purpose to winning, a prize at the end – even if it did sound a little desperate when Roberto Martínez defended his record as Portugal manager by pointing to his Nations League success in 2025. And as a quick test of just how relevant the Nations League is, ask yourself how many of its former winners you can name. In that sense, it occupies a similar role to the Carabao Cup, a competition that is not nothing but is not obviously something either.
In the international calendar, it operates as a palate-cleanser. Admittedly in part because of the breaking news in the Manchester City case, Saturday’s game between England and Spain arrived almost unnoticed. The Premier League paused.
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