The football came all parcelled up in other stuff last night. England played well, staying the hands of the tabloid kings poised with their pointy headlines: In the name of Hod, Go!

Prince Charles and Prince Harry said cheese for the cameras and the photos were distributed free at the Fuji stand. Orderly queues please! And in the stadium it was almost giddy enough to make one forget the bitter scenes just outside where the boozed up channel-hopping day trippers turned little Lens into little Beirut.

England go on to St Etienne next Tuesday, to another football ground of such towering Englishness that Archibald Leich might have blueprinted its angled gables and steep banks. On the pitch however the feel will be a little different. Argentina represent easily the most daunting challenge that England have faced in this World Cup. Those headlines will stay fresh a while yet.

And yet for a fleetingly surreal interval last night it looked as if Hoddle hadn't just won the right to appeal but had had his case overturned. The Romanians (having collectively stuck their heads in a bucket of bleach in homage to Craig Burley) were losing (in homage to Craig Burley). The English were making tatters of the Colombians. Argentina might yet be avoided.

It didn't all unravel as perfectly as that but Hoddle, who will be peddling the positive over the next few days, gleaned sufficient good things from the night.

"I think it was our best performance. A positive, controlled performance. We passed the ball extremely well and all of our players get at least eight out of 10."

Hoddle may be a generous master but the goals were certainly of the grade he suggested. In the 20th minute Bermudez failed to clear properly with a defensive header and Darren Anderton, lurking three yards away, drove the ball high to the roof of the Colombian net by way of punishment. A fine goal and nothing more than the English deserved for their plain, wholehearted approach.

Not long afterwards David Beckham impressed royalty and Posh alike with a cracking free kick from 30 yards which curled as gently as a highway towards home.

And so the Anderton or Beckham argument has settled itself for the moment. Anderton and Beckham it is. Hoddle bought some peace and rationalised with divine hindsight.

"I had always earmarked David Beckham for the Colombia game because they play with a flat back four and David Beckham can play the ball behind."

Hoddle is a strange man. Self obsessed in a shallow way which suggests that his born again Christianity is merely awed applause for whomever he has decided created him. One suspects he isn't big on introspection but his management experience is slender for a man who brings such an arrogant front to his business.

He is quite an act to watch. If England fail to escape the second round the sky above him will be charcoaled with thunderclouds. If they contrive to beat Argentina his country will swing behind him and football's newest emperor will be all kitted out. Quite a drama.

His probation has been troubled. He selects his team with an insensitive peevishness that borders on spite sometimes, badmouthing players to the press, badmouthing the press to the press. Yet his team is finally coming around to the formation which best brings out its potential.

The feline pace and balance of Owen is compensating for Shearer's mildy out-of-sorts start to the tournament. The Liverpool kid didn't score last night but all the best chances belonged to him and if the Colombians didn't know much they knew enough to foul him every chance they got.

In midfield Hoddle has resigned himself to the fact that of 60 per cent of that constituency don't currently favour tackling unless in extreme circumstances. Still the creativity of Beckham, Anderton and Paul Scholes will more than compensate for the withdrawal of the maniacally aggressive Batty.

Colombia didn't do enough last night to tell England anything about themselves that they didn't know already.

They cross-stitched their little flicks and embroidered their passes with hopeless fussiness and managed the not inconsiderable feat of looking a slightly worse side than their opening two games had suggested. Bereft of Asprilla they depended on an old showman. Valderrama, 36 now but still bearing the hair of a younger Vera Duckworth, earns his peroxide in the wilting world of Major League Soccer in the US. That environment left him unprepared and only his mop saved him from anonymity last night. Big Freddy Rincon cantered about broad as a barn door and just as obvious. Everywhere else the Colombians had bit players.

England took their points, tuned into the last minute of commentary from Romania and Tunisia like convicts hoping for news of amnesty. Then they sped off to their base in Brittany.

Behind them the town of Lens looked as if it had endured quite enough of this World Cup, thank you. Bottles were flying, helicopters raked the sky, sirens played their blues and the night was peppered with obscenities. The little streets rumbled like Pamplona at bull-running time.

Lens could be forgiven for not seeing it all as just another day at the office. One of its policemen lay tubed up and dying in a Paris hospital and the town will spend the next 24 hours putting itself back together, sweeping the glass from the streets and swilling the bad taste from its mouth.

Leaving town on the last train, rolling off through the low fields of northern France where so many Englishmen left their lives behind long ago you could still hear the last belligerent chants of their descendants. If it wasn't for the English you'd be Krauts.

On to St Etienne.