Soccer: Phew! Two quick jabs and with a great bang the air went exploding out of the Stadium of Light, leaving behind just a vacuum of confusion and a great singing, swaying bank of French supporters. Their trumpets played jazz. Their heroes played fast and loose. Their hearts had played pitty-patter. Their show goes on.

In the end, the very end, pure quality and panache prevailed, but in truth the French had stopped hoping for reprieve. The English, jolly and red-faced in the sun, outnumbered the French in the stadium by a ratio of perhaps four to one and the volume told its own tale. The St George's crosses fluttered happily, their bearers celebrated harder and louder with each dying minute of the second half. More and more it looked as if Frank Lampard's meaty first-half header would separate the teams at the finish.

France had begun with a lightness and beauty which gave us no hint that the night was going to play such tricks. Early on, as the game settled into a somewhat hectic rhythm, the approach play was immaculate, the ball hugging the perfect grass as it was swept from one French instep to the other in mesmerising patterns. Zidane, Pires and Vieira practically huddled to call the shots in the style of gridiron quarterbacks.

Move after move spliced through the English defence. Plodding policemen chasing little sprites. The French weren't scoring, but they were looking lovely and dashing. It seemed like it would be enough.

And then a meat and potatoes moment if ever there was one. Beckham, sending his personal stock soaring once again with a free kick from the right wing where he had been pushed in the back by a petulant Lizarazu. Lampard rising high, getting a good, solid contact on the header and the net rippling. Catastrophe!

The French looked to their countrymen in the stands. The stands gazed back impassive and subdued. The communion seemed broken. Poetry was losing out to prose. Stout oxtail soup being preferred to delicate consomme. England, big and brawny, defying France, subtle and rapierlike. Such times are the enemy of certainty.

Dark moments. The French had begun the game with such spry confidence. Now they looked as if they had been told that the end of the world was nigh. For a team who went home from the last World Cup in disgrace, perhaps it was more nigh than was comfortable.

And for the rest of us? An uncomfortable shifting in our seats. Since England gutted and filleted Germany in Munich a few years ago we have known that the old diversions have been taken from us. Our neighbours are no longer the fatmen taking amusing pratfalls on banana skins at major tournaments. Where once they gave us the gift of laughter, now they fill us with dread. If everyone's favourite anorak wearer suddenly begins dressing like Big Bird, well, Inger-land could be contenders again.

The French had all bowed their heads and accepted their fate like men to the guillotine. Almost of all of them had, anyway. We gritted our teeth and prepared to be gracious over the garden fence.

Time ticked on relentless as ever. The second half began with the French blowing like a warm mistral. Zidane and Vieira and Henry all thumped balls into the chest of David James. For 15 minutes or so they weaved silken patterns which all ended up somehow on James' chest.

If there was going to be a moment of deliverance, we assumed Henry would provide it.

Much is made about the acceleration of Henry, but what is truly alarming about him is the pace he is moving at before he shifts gears for two or three seconds. He comes like a gangly tornado blowing hither and tither with the ball at his feet, and then, just as he is about to blow past anyway, he slips for two maybe three seconds into hurricane mode. Defenders tear their neck muscles turning to see him blow past. Often last night he whistled past defenders like a storm cutting through a trailer park, but the goal eluded him. The French looked elsewhere.

Ah, Zizou. The Liberator. Only the little balding man from the Castellane could have provided such moments. Swoosh! Slash! In the margin between normal time and the end of the game he ensured his legacy with two moments when he proved himself to have ice in his blood.

Zizou! Zizou! Zizou! They chanted for some 20 minutes after the cavorting French players had left the field and the English had gone sourly into the night. Zidane 2 Angleterre 1! Off they went and painted the town bleu.

When he is old and more gnarled than he already is they will talk about this night and about the night he won the European Cup for Real Madrid, evenings when the execution of perfection met with the maximum of pressure and Zidane pulled off the miracles. In Glasgow three years ago it was a stunning volley as the ball dropped out of the sky. Last night in injury time it was a free kick and penalty. Sublime.

We know now. Between Beckham and Zidane lives the difference between substance and hype. Beckham, with that trademark glow, not least from his golden groin, had the chance to send France back to that purgatory they flew direct to from the last World Cup: he banged a penalty just right of Barthez who parried it gleefully.

When Zidane's time came with the match dead in every imagination except his, he was unflustered.

Imagine. All year he had piled the pressure on himself by announcing, to the chagrin of his employers in Madrid, that France was his priority for this year. And it came to this. A goal to nil down to England with the embers barely glowing. His greatness dissolving into foolish hubris.

He delivered though. He broke the night wide open and set the competition ablaze.

More nights like these and he could hurl for Wexford some day.