THERE were various T shirts on sale round Wembley on Saturday. Some proclaimed "We'll fight them on the beaches". Others said "Bulldog Breed" and "V-E Day". Now England have got to play Germany again, and in the next 60 or so hours it is all going to get much, much worse.

It is time to impose a self denying ordinance. No more analogies involving any combination of the second World War, John Major's European policy, and football. It has been ludicrously overdone: if the government has not made Britain look stupid all round the Continent this past week, then the puerile ravings of the Daily Mirror certainly have.

This ordinance takes effect at the beginning of the fourth paragraph. In the meantime, before dropping the metaphor forever, let us say that Saturday's game was emphatically not V-E Day. It was not even D-Day. It did bear some resemblance to Dunkirk: a retreat that turned into a sort of success that can be dressed up as a triumph - thanks to a combination of about three parts phenomenal luck, one part cool practicality, and a dash of monkey business thrown in. In other words, a John Major-ish sort of victory.

As a football match, England v Spain was not brilliant. There were a lot of errors on both sides, and the greatest heights of skill were reached in the art of robust defence. Had it been Grimsby v Port Vale in February the crowd would have found it rather ordinary: what they used to call in the Football Pink "end to end stuff".

But the match cannot be separated from the atmosphere. Apart from anything else, without the various advantages of being at home, England would almost certainly have lost. It was not Grimsby v Port Vale. It was a sensational occasion. It was also an almost wholly pleasant and enjoyable one.

The crowds' inability to sing Abide With Me on Cup Final Day is sometimes put down to the Wembley roof muffling the sound. This theory was exposed on Saturday. The noise was incredible. And there was in the singing something unrecognisable from the viciousness that was the dominant characteristic of English football culture for about two decades.

The mood was innocent and guileless, like being at the Commonwealth Games in Canada or New Zealand, where all the locals wave silly little flags and get absurdly excited every time one of their chaps wins a medal in the weight lifting or the backstroke. The vast majority of the crowd did not think it was V-E Day or the Armada; they thought it was a football match, and they loved it.

It was summed up in the face of the wide eyed team mascot, as Tony Adams led him out, arm on his shoulder, and then ruffled his hair at the end of the anthems. Suddenly, the world seemed fresh and new again.

Now it was England's turn to wave the flag. This new cult of St George, previously only invoked in the annual April 23rd piece in the Telegraph or Mail moaning that no one takes any notice of him, seems more agreeable than the old union jackmanship that used to accompany the England football team. It is difficult to be convincingly threatening and nasty when you have a cross painted across your face so that the tip of your nose is a flaming scarlet.

The innocence was not universal. On the edge of the small Spanish enclave at Wembley (a sort of Gibraltar in reverse) there were a few scumbags making noises and gestures. But there were not enough of them to inhibit the Spanish supporters. For much of the game, with the huge crowd rendered silent by the sudden discovery that foreigners could play football, it was not Drake's Drum that was beating, but a great big bass drum carried around by a Spaniard in a silly hat.

The mood was emphatically not, however, ugly. One senses it would have not have gone that way even if England lost. This proposition may be tested to destruction in the next seven days.