This can no longer be written off as meaningless. The Nations League has instead produced England’s worst-ever home defeat to a side from outside the old “home nations”, and worst in all since 1928, as Hungary symbolically surpassed their own famous 6-3 of 1953.
We might well see a similar inquest. This obviously can’t be dismissed as just the Nations League any more. There felt more to it than fatigue or circumstances.
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Gareth Southgate has real problems to solve, as his team lost momentum and – perhaps most relevantly – he lost the support of a significant section of a home crowd. It is the first show of the sort of negativity that used to sour so many campaigns and managerial reigns of the past, and this went really toxic.
Southgate and his players were repeatedly booed, with that reaching a crescendo as Harry Maguire was brought on to shore up a defence that had lost John Stones to a red card.
