They Turned Nothing Into Something

Some form of cacophonous national meltdown seemed only 11 minutes away. Eleven measly little minutes. Eleven fraught, exhausted minutes.

I swear that on the Central London streets of Soho, even in the packed but soccer-moderate tiny pub called the Dog & Duck, you could just about sense the meltdown as if it were headed round the bend from that block right over there, maybe in a delivery truck.

Just 11 more minutes, and . . . How exactly would it look? Sure, England had lost shockingly to the United States in 1950, and had gone out of World Cups twice on penalty kicks, but England had never experienced a goal-less draw with the smallest nation in the history of the event, a nation with about 2.2% of England’s roster payroll.

After a sunny Thursday pregnant with waiting, and seven working hours of apparent sloth, and an hour between 4 and 5 p.m. in which every office in London seemed to have closed anticipating the excursion with Trinidad and Tobago, there had been 82 minutes of a clingy goalless-ness.

Eleven more minutes, eight of regulation time and probably three of extra, and while I couldn’t hear wailing or griping, not in the Dog & Duck or in the street, I somehow thought I could feel 50 million people inhale. A nation of shortened breathing. Mass, noiseless flabbergast. Enough quietly desperate disbelief that it didn’t even occur to me to think of Scotland up there giggling.

A goal-less draw with Trinidad and Tobago wouldn’t end the World Cup for England, but it might end all daydreams of deleting the sentence ENGLAND HASN’T WON A WORLD CUP IN 40 YEARS. It would electrify two Caribbean islands near Venezuela, but how would it look here?

Would the gawky, 6-foot-7 striker Peter Crouch become a public pinata? Sure, he looks overmatched in international play, but wouldn’t everybody remember the 43rd minute, when he took a gorgeous cross from David Beckham, found himself alone in front of the goal, and . . . looked like a tremulous nightmare? You know, that nightmare when you’re right in front of the goal with the ball in the World Cup and you boot it so far to the right of the goal you look completely out of place on the roster?

Would the Crouch goal dance, famous in England, become an act of mockery?

What about that play shortly after Crouch’s, when goalkeeper Paul Robinson appeared to have left for a bathroom break and a Trinidad and Tobago header eased toward the gaping English goal, and John Terry lunged gaspingly to clear it out?

Would anyone even remember that?

Or that moment in the 58th minute. When the 20-year-old Manchester United and national-obsession striker, Wayne Rooney, finally did enter a match for the first time since breaking his metatarsal on April 29. When a hopeful chill seemed to roam a nation of punchless strikers that knows full well why it obsesses over one.

Eight World Cup matches without a second-half goal, stretching all the way back through last Saturday, through Japan/South Korea 2002, through much of France 1998.

How’s that even possible?

Then, suddenly, goal, by Crouch, from Beckham.

Then, another, in extra time, by Steven Gerrard.

Changed the whole night, the whole weekend.