Sunder Katwala

England did not expect. That was the key to this summer's World Cup. Last night's defeat by Croatia was a gut-wrenching disappointment. Yet four weeks ago, any England fan told that the World Cup run would end in extra-time in the semi-finals would have jumped at the prospect. On and off the pitch, it has been a summer that has changed how we think about England. Is football just sport? Yes. But sport can do things that nothing else can. Nations are imagined communities of millions where we share something with people we do not know. There are few other things than sport that thirty million of us can share that captures such an idea so powerfully. England embraced Gareth Southgate as a national leader because he told us things about ourselves that we needed to hear in 2018.

England kick off their World Cup campaign today by putting their faith in youth as they take on Tunisia: Gareth Southgate's squad have the lowest average age and the fewest caps won of any of the 32 teams at the tournament. Only three of the squad – Gary Cahill, Ashley Young and Jamie Vardy – had even been born when Gazza’s tears captured a nation’s hearts at Italia ’90. Yet while the team's youth has been the subject of much hype, another factor about this England squad has not captured any headlines: this is the most ethnically diverse squad that England has ever taken to the World Cup.

After nineteen hours without food, nor even a drop of water, the prospect of the single succulent date which breaks the fast looms ever larger in the mind as sunset nears. A few minutes after nine o’clock last night, similar scenes were doubtless playing out in mosques and Muslim homes around Britain. But this event was a little different. As the imam’s prayer rang out across the high ceilinged courtyard, many of those kneeling to pray were in khaki uniforms while others wore headscarves. The Ministry of Defence had invited Muslim soldiers and civic Muslim groups to break their Ramadan fast with a celebratory feast in the Whitehall citadel of the British defence establishment.

Who was the greatest sporting star who fought in the first world war? It is a difficult argument to settle at a century’s distance, with nobody still alive who saw them play and only fleeting glimpses from the very first steps of the newsreel era. The names are less familiar now, but contemporary accounts of their exploits and the sporting record books prove that they belong in the first rank of British sporting history. British Future has selected an inevitably subjective ‘1st XI’ of the fallen, to help to bring the names of these sporting greats back into our public consciousness.

History is written by the victors. So Richard III might have anticipated that his death at Bosworth Field in 1485, the last English monarch to be killed on the battlefield, would only be the start of a downward reputational spiral. The last five hundred years have not been good for the man whose remains may just have been found under a Leicester car-park yesterday. Shakespeare did much of the damage, forever fixing our image of this hunched Machiavellian schemer and his ignominious downfall – 'my Kingdom for a horse' – though the Bard was popularising an existing Tudor narrative.