England: 4 Croatia: 1

The scoreline suggests that the chaps at CERN did create a parallel universe yesterday. It lasted from 8pm to 10pm BST yesterday evening.

This parallel universe also revealed the existence of the Higgs Boson of English football: in Theo Walcott we discovered something the existence of which had been doubted by many: a young footballer who is not only extremely gifted but intelligent, good-looking, fluent in interviews and modest.
It was Roy of the Rovers stuff and it's difficult to believe that Theo is not, like Roy of the Rovers, a fictitious character.
Know what I mean? Which Theo didn't say once in post-match interviews.

As someone who saw the entire match (thanks to Virgin giving me Setanta free of charge), I do have to sound a note of caution and give some reasons not to be too cheerful. Not yet, anyway.
In the first fifteen minutes Croatia put England under a lot of pressure and could easily have had two or three goals.
In the final half hour, Croatia seemed to have almost given up and sat back and let England knock the ball around. Not every team is going to roll over in the face of impending defeat.
Not one of England's goals would elicit the comment: "the goalie didn't have a chance." They were well-taken goals but I honestly think a better goalie would have saved some or all of them.
Finally, England have a track record of unpredictability and inconsistency. They've sprung these kind of surprises before. They're masters of the flash in the pan before going down the pan.

So today is a day for cautious optimism and the adoption of a new motto for the England team: Spero in Theo.