International football can be a frustrating affair. You wait months to see your players. Half of them get injured playing for their clubs. When you finally meet up, you only have a few days of training and then you find yourself endlessly playing Andorra, defending in the deepest, most compact 5-4-1 the European game has ever seen. It barely looks like football. Certainly not like a World Cup.

But sometimes, international football can be profoundly satisfying, rewarding and even exciting. That has not been the case with England for a while now but that was the story of Tuesday night in Belgrade: unquestionably the best night of Thomas Tuchel’s England tenure to date.

This was billed as Tuchel’s hardest game yet away to a dangerous team in a challenging atmosphere, and in stifling evening heat. And England dominated every minute of it. The 5-0 scoreline does little justice to how superior they were.

It is almost one year now since Tuchel was appointed as England manager but it had felt as if his reign had not truly got going. He did not have a game until this March, with two low-intensity home qualifiers. He had five games before this one, two against Andorra, and you would struggle to argue that England played convincingly in any of them. With the clock ticking down to the World Cup, this was a team in desperate need of a moment, an electrifying event, just to persuade people that they are on the right track. That all of the fuss of hiring a world-class manager might actually be worth it.

Thomas Tuchel delivers his instructions in Belgrade (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

Tuchel knew more than anyone that he needed this lift-off event, that the patience of the public would not last forever if England continued to play such tepid, muddled football. He was determined to draw a line under his first two camps and start afresh this time. A smaller squad, less training time, clearer plans, a more purposeful game.

But there was no guarantee that any of this would actually work. And when England beat Andorra 2-0 at Villa Park on Saturday, the kindest thing you could say about it is that it was better than when they scraped past Andorra 1-0 in June. For Tuchel to prove that England were progressing, to prove that they had a plan, they needed to deliver here in Belgrade.

Even Tuchel in his most optimistic moments could not have imagined it would have gone like this. Gone was the ponderous, confused football England have played under him so far. Instead they were direct and precise.

Never was this more clear than halfway through the first half. After a methodical start, they began to play with a purpose which Serbia could not live with. It all started with Elliot Anderson, pulling the strings in the middle of the pitch, and tended to carry on with Morgan Rogers, trusted to start as the 10. First, Rogers played in Noni Madueke, who raced in behind but could not convert. Then Anderson found Rogers, who set up Anthony Gordon, whose shot was saved. The pressure was too much and Harry Kane headed England in front.

What followed was the greatest single moment of the Tuchel era so far. Better than anything did England under Lee Carsley, who was in interim charge for six games before Tuchel was appointed. Better perhaps than anything from the end of the Gareth Southgate era, except for a few dramatic moments at Euro 2024. It was a goal that immediately made sense of everything Tuchel had been trying to do.

Anderson had up the ball in midfield and wasted no time passing it forward to Rogers.

Without appearing to look, Rogers flicked the ball round the corner, straight into the path of Madueke running in behind, cutting inwards from the right.

In full flight, Madueke swerved in front of Strahinja Pavlovic, daring the Serbia defender to take him down…

…and then lifted the ball over Dorde Petrovic before Kosta Nedeljkovic could stop him.

It was a brilliant goal: not just for the quality, not just for the high stakes, but for how it seemed to encapsulate what Tuchel wanted from England. It was direct, it was purposeful, it was imaginative, it was efficient. These are qualities we have not seen from England for some time. It was a goal that can be held up as an example of how this team wants to play when they have the ball and a bit of space to work with. You would not say that about many of the other goals they have scored this year.

But as good as that goal was, this win was not just about that. It was also about England’s mastery of set pieces. Kane’s goal came from a corner. Marc Guehi converted a free kick. (Declan Rice got the assist both times.) Marcus Rashford scored a late penalty to make it five. Everyone knows how important set pieces will be next summer. Tuchel has admitted it himself. But it was impressive to see England looking so good at them.

Perhaps the most impressive thing was that this was the first time we have seen anything resembling an identity from this England side.

The traditional failing of English football is that we care so much about who plays, and fixate on personalities, that we forget about how the team plays. With no Jude Bellingham, Bukayo Saka or Cole Palmer this break, it would have been easy enough to just talk personalities for two weeks. But instead, Tuchel picked a hungry, in-form squad and the players rewarded him by playing like this.

Of course, there are still more questions that Tuchel will need to answer. Not least about rebalancing the team for different tactical challenges and with different available players. But no one can dispute the strength of their position now, with five wins from five. It is clear that Tuchel has some sharp ideas and the buy-in from the players to make them work. They finally look like a real team. They finally have lift-off.

(Top photo: Michael Regan/Getty Images)