Gareth Southgate’s England showed against Croatia that Wembley can indeed have a voice

In the build-up to Sunday’s game against Croatia, Gareth Southgate seemed at curious pains to stress how much the setting would inspire their opponents. “They will look forward to coming to Wembley,” he said. “Coming to a full house at Wembley, they will have big players that will relish that challenge. We have to relish that as well.”

Perhaps it was simply a neat bit of reverse psychology. Or perhaps there was more than a kernel of a warning there. After all, for much of its history the national stadium has been one of those venues that has inspired the opposition more than it inspires its occupants. In much the same way that for years England’s cricketers struggled at Lord’s, it was the sort of place where visitors raised their game. By contrast, for your average English football fan Wembley is either an enormous white elephant at the other end of the country, a cavernous spacecraft with the atmosphere of an industrial estate or that place where you took the kids to see Ed Sheeran earlier this year and paid £35 for a round of drinks. None of which, if we’re going to be honest, really screams fortress.

At a time when the Football Association were open to selling Wembley to Shahid Khan, and after the rousing successes of playing Nigeria at Elland Road and Switzerland at the King Power Stadium had convinced the players that taking the team on the road was the best option (“I’m a big one for travelling around the country – the atmospheres were quality”, Kieran Trippier said), all of this raised a pertinent question: could Wembley still be considered a net asset for this England team? Was it a help or a hindrance?

In a way, Sunday’s game provided us with a conclusive answer.

As England laid siege to the Croatia goal in the closing minutes as they sought to convert their 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 lead, Wembley heaved. For once, nobody was leaving early to get an early stab at the Jubilee Line. For once, the paper aeroplanes were laid to one side. For once, Wembley felt like a proper football stadium rather than simply a tourist attraction. And the roar that followed Harry Kane’s late winner was the sort of moment that bonds a team to its stadium and a stadium to its fans: a truly golden Wembley memory, and in the 11 years since it was knocked down and built back up again, it’s safe to say England haven’t had too many of those.

Has a turning point been reached in England’s relationship with its national stadium? Can they turn Wembley into their fortress? Perhaps the jury’s still out on that one. One of Wembley’s problems is that it’s too comfortable. The wind whips through the cavernous rows of seats and carries the ambient noise high over the A406. When the new stadium was unveiled, organisers boasted that every seat enjoyed the same legroom of the old Royal Box. This was great for selling debenture packages and concert tickets. It was not great for atmosphere.

The other problem has been a chronic lack of competitive games against decent opposition. The way qualification is structured means that the vast majority of England’s games at Wembley will either be against inferior opposition, or consequence-free friendlies where the result is long forgotten amid a mist of substitutions and Mexican waves. The 2-1 defeat to Spain in September was England’s first competitive defeat at Wembley in 11 years, since the fateful game against Croatia in 2007 that ended Steve McClaren’s tenure. But as anyone who’s sat through those 11 years will testify, that doesn’t exactly qualify it as a gilded era.

So in one important respect, the novelty of the Nations League format has handed the bigger countries something they had long been missing: the opportunity to give their home fans decent fixtures with something riding on them. In another, England will become victims of their own success: winning their Nations League group has ensured top seeding for Euro 2020 qualification, and another steady stream of makeweights. But if England can tap into the memory of Sunday afternoon and make Wembley a genuinely intimidating place to visit, then Southgate’s emerging squad will have developed yet another string to its impressive bow.