When England won the World Cup back in 1966, the team was entirely white. The first Black football player to pull on an England shirt was Viv Anderson twelve years later.
Fast forward to last Sunday, when England came within a penalty kick of winning an international competition for the first time since '66, and the team was as diverse as the nation that cheered it on.
More than half the players in the England squad have a parent or grandparent born outside the United Kingdom. Harry Kane, the captain, is a white working class Londoner of part-Irish descent. Raheem Sterling, the other main goal-getter, was five years old when he came to England with his mother from Jamaica.
The entire team took the knee at every game as a statement of intent to root out the racism that still lurks within England's national game. That racism has resurfaced this week, prompting bitter criticism from a prominent Black footballer directed at one of Britain's most powerful Indian-origin politicians.