It was a hot, dry July in 2021 and a cohort of seven young English footballers was basking in the belief that they were flying to the moon.
Marcus Rashford, Jack Grealish, Jadon Sancho, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Ben Chilwell, Kalvin Phillips and Raheem Sterling had all been in the England squad that reached the final of the European Championships that summer and when the pain of the penalty shoot-out receded, the Premier League seemed like a cloudless sky.
Rashford signed a seven-year partnership with Nike that month, campaigned for child literacy and powerfully articulated the devastation he felt at a shoot-out miss in an Instagram post liked by more than four and a half million people.