Welcome to the new world. This was a miserable occasion on a miserable night, in a miserable stadium, against miserable opposition – decorated with a miserable backdrop of recrimination and bad blood.
But it was also, in its own way, a righteous occasion. Racist abuse in football stadiums has been a source of unhappiness for as long as there has been racist abuse, racist violence and everything else along the spectrum. In Sofia, for the first time, football made a live intervention. It was vile, disturbing and toxic, with the promise of greater violence in the air as the stadium simmered through a deeply unpleasant evening of what was, at times only notionally, international sport.
At half-time England’s players walked off looking soul-sick at the whole sorry spectacle. Behind them Bulgaria’s captain, Ivelin Popov, leaned into the wire fencing to appeal to the home fans to stop the racist chanting that threatened to curtail the entire sorry spectacle.
Football has never seen anything quite like this before. The scheduled half-time break was the third stoppage of the game. The previous two will live in sporting infamy as a wretched kind of history was made here in Bulgaria.
The first intervention came just after England’s second goal of their 4-0 half-time lead. In the England end the sounds of joy and exhilaration were replaced by chants of “You racist bastards, you know what you are”.
Provocative, perhaps, but also prescient and entirely accurate. The first monkey chants from the home crowd came shortly after with 22 minutes on the clock. They were directed at Tyrone Mings, who took the ball by the touchline and was greeted by a small group of Bulgarians making the hated, hateful noises.
Mings made his pass then turned and looked at the crowd. In that moment your heart broke slightly. Here was a man on his England debut, fielding not just the vilest abuse, but a moment that will echo, wretchedly, far beyond this shabby-looking pitch.
Moments later, Gareth Southgate could be seen up on his feet talking to the Uefa official Danilo Filacchione, pointing over at the far side where the noise had come from.
Filacchione spoke into his walkie‑talkie as the game paused. And so we waited. Finally, the announcement came over the PA, a thin, anxious, hectoring voice that drew boos and shrieks from the home crowd.
The warning was clear. “Because of racist behaviour among spectators which is interfering with the game the referee has indicated he may have to suspend the match. Please be under no mistake the game will be suspended and may be abandoned if the racist behaviour continues.”
We crawled on horribly. On 40 minutes there was more of the same abuse as Mings took the ball. A three‑way conflab between manager, referee and official followed, with Southgate forcefully making his point. Once again the game and the basic idea of sport just fell apart, with more whistles and missiles thrown from the ultras in black at the end close to the Bulgaria goal.
England’s players shuffled together protectively. Finally, they walked back out to restart when they might quite easily have chosen to walk off, a decision that drew boos and whistles from the home crowd.
Six minutes of stoppage time for racism, the board flashed up. There was time still for more abuse as Mings took the ball and for the sight of a huge phalanx of riot police, helmets on, to loom up at the side of the pitch. Time also for another goal as Kieran Trippier and Harry Kane (playing a wonderful hand as a creator in the middle of all this poison) set up Raheem Sterling to make it 4-0.
Bulgaria’s team had played like a rabble. Their fans had disgraced their country, European football, and indeed deeply embarrassed (it is to be hoped) their president, Boris Mikhailov.
Presumably, Mikhailov’s personal apologies to England’s players will be just as heartfelt as his complaints on Friday that Tammy Abraham had been wide of the mark in assuming that exactly this might happen in Bulgaria’s national stadium.
Will England ever want to come here again? Before kick-off their fans had filled their corner-slice of this sallow concrete bowl with the usual travelling pageantry of St George’s Cross flags. The rest of the stadium was a half-empty husk. No great hardship shutting parts of this ground: the end opposite the banned area remained a sea of empty washed-out green and blue plastic. It made for an eerie, echoey weirdly enervated atmosphere as the teams kicked off.
Yet in the middle of this there was something majestic about England as they carried on, still being abused periodically but determined to see this through as far as they could.
A fifth goal without reply came, drawing chants of “who put the ball in the racists’ net? Raheem, Raheem Sterling”, followed by a sixth.
There will be a reckoning up for the Bulgarian Football Association and sanctions (again) for their fans. A genuine punishment is required this time. It may or may not arrive.
Only one thing is certain for now: England’s players can be hugely proud of their own grace under pressure on a wretched night.