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For some of those watching their first World Cup, memories will have been forged on Monday morning.

Plenty of children across England were allowed to stay up into the small hours to marvel at Jude Bellingham, Harry Kane and the defiant second-half resilience that jettisoned Mexico from their own tournament. Others will have woken early to watch on delay but ‘as live’, with some schools even replaying the last-16 tie in full, the youngsters fidgeting nervously as the co-hosts stretched Thomas Tuchel’s 10-men.

Events at the Estadio Azteca will have shaped impressions of the game in their young minds. Pupils will have sprinted from the school hall to re-enact Bellingham and Kane’s celebrations in the playground, or mimic Jordan Pickford’s acrobatic excellence. A few may now be obsessed by Dan Burn blocking a Raul Jimenez overhead kick with his head, and sending the ball ballooning clear over the halfway line.

The memories may stay with that young audience for life.

The World Cup tends to have that effect, so we asked our writers — young and old — to recall their first encounters with the tournament: from the romance of grainy pictures on television sets in the 1980s to the joys and disappointments of seeing their favourites flourish or founder.

‘Toto’ Schillaci and a sexy Italian kit

My earliest World Cup memory (an incredibly hazy one) is of sitting on my mum and dad’s bed watching the 1986 final. For days in advance, all the talk was of this little genius, Diego Maradona. I was five, so I naively expected him to score 10 times. His failure to score once left me nonplussed.

But the earliest moment that really sticks with me is the 1990 semi-final between Italy and Argentina. Because Italy were hosts, because Salvatore ‘Toto’ Schillaci had been touched by God and because the Italian kit was damn sexy, I found myself invested in the idea of them winning the tournament. And the way things were going, I was convinced they would.

The semi started well when Schillaci — who else? — scored early on. It turned for the worse when Claudio Caniggia equalised, helped by flappy goalkeeper Walter Zenga. And then came the penalty shootout, from which I’ve always remembered the names of the Italian players who missed (Roberto Donadoni and Aldo Serena) and the faces of a gutted Italian crowd.

Feeling like an honorary Roman or Neapolitan was, with hindsight, pretty weird. But I guess that’s what the magic of your first proper World Cup does to you.

Phil Hay

Michael Owen’s PlayStation goal

Saint-Etienne in the summer of 1998. Michael Owen, still only 18, was fresh off from his breakthrough season at Liverpool. It was before all the injuries. His pace was electric, he was fearless; the wunderkind exciting my generation.

His goal against Argentina in the last 16 is seared into my memory. It was awe-inspiring for an eight-year-old to watch the way he moved past defenders like they weren’t there, to run half the pitch and then have the audacity to stick the ball into the top corner. It was the sort of goal you scored on your PlayStation.

I remember being allowed to stay up a little later. It had been a thrilling start with two penalties inside the opening 10 minutes. I was heading and kicking everything. I still felt high on the relief of Alan Shearer’s equaliser from the spot when Owen tipped me over the edge.

A young Michael Owen bursts away from Nelson Vivas (Patrick Kovarik/AFP via Getty Images)

David Beckham, typically, picked the pass to Owen, who was waiting on the half-turn in the centre circle. The first touch, glanced off the side of his boot, past Jose Chamot was outrageous. The defender did well to get close enough to glance him, but Owen was too small and agile. Roberto Ayala, one of the game’s greats, was too square and was done by the stepover.

Owen then rifled it into the far top corner. It made a kid think anything was possible; the belief it gave me as a young, naive fan. In that one fleeting moment, you felt they would go on to win the World Cup.

Beren Cross

Platt’s winner and Bobby’s jig

Like Phil, I have some hazy memories of Mexico ’86 — the news reports of Gary Lineker’s hat-trick against Poland, and then being at home, watching on television as the country lost its mind over Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’.But also like Phil, my first clear memories, and the ones that stand out, are from Italia ’90.

There were the live updates on television from what looked like an incredibly hot and exotic England training camp, the heartbreak of the national team’s penalty shootout loss to Germany, and the BBC’s iconic opening credits to the strains of Nessun Dorma.

But the moment that really stands out is David Platt’s superb winning goal in the final minute of extra time in the last-16 game against Belgium.

David Platt spins away after scoring his stunning winner against Belgium (Albert Cooper/Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix via Getty Images)

It had been 120 minutes fraught with nerves and frustration, followed by that explosion of joy complete with Bobby Robson’s famous jig on the touchline. For an 11-year-old who had already developed an affection for football, this was a final realisation of what sport can do to emotions and moods. A lifelong love affair was underway.

It was also a hell of a strike by Platt from a free kick delivered by England’s man of the moment, Paul Gascoigne.

There have been many highs and even more lows with England since that day, but that was the moment which had me leaping around my parents’ living room uncontrollably. None other has ever quite matched it.

Steve Madeley

The night that unified a nation

The first soccer game I ever watched was the 1990 World Cup final between West Germany and Argentina. I sat on my grandparents’ thick, forest green carpet and remember hearing my papa mutter German words under his breath that I didn’t know, but the intonation didn’t suggest they were always positive.

When I looked away from the grainy feed, I saw my grandparents, who had emigrated to Canada from the small town of Bad Wildungen 36 years earlier. I looked to the side to see my dad and my aunts and uncles all sitting beside each other. They were all in agreement on something, which was rare: Germany had to win this game.

Of course, I didn’t understand the significance of the game as a wide-eyed child — and of course, I only learned many years later it was one of the most tedious World Cup finals ever played — but I did understand that this game was a unifier. The World Cup, something I probably only learned about that morning of July 8, 1990, brought people together.

Andreas Brehme, Lothar Matthaus and Pierre Littbarski celebrate their World Cup success in 1990 (Daniel Garcia/AFP via Getty Images)

I had only started playing soccer — a strange game in Canada at that point — two years earlier. Whatever this thing was, it brought people joy and it was meant to be shared.

My papa was always the one who received phone calls in his house. He never made them because people wanted to talk to him. But after Andreas Brehme scored his penalty, he nearly tripped over me while racing to his black rotary phone. He made an egregiously expensive call across the Atlantic Ocean to his brothers back in Germany.

Germany had won the World Cup and he had to share his joy. To this day, I can’t stand the thought of watching World Cup games alone.

Joshua Kloke

Robbie Keane in stoppage time

I was five years old when practically every pupil in my school huddled into a tiny assembly hall, craning our little necks to catch a glimpse of the screen as the Republic of Ireland took on Germany at the 2002 World Cup.

The television was a small, fuzzy analogue set, a technological relic even back then. I did not care one bit. With small green-white-orange tricolours painted on both cheeks, I was utterly transfixed, swept along by the communal buzz and excitement.

I barely understood the rules. The players’ names meant nothing to me, and my attention was probably divided between the match and more pressing concerns such as lunchtime and my next bathroom break.

But the roar when Robbie Keane scored a last-gasp equaliser will never leave me; the cacophonous squeals bouncing around the room (it was probably less enjoyable for the adults present).

Robbie Keane celebrates after scoring the Republic of Ireland’s equaliser against Germany in 2002 (Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)

I rushed home and tried, excitedly and incoherently, to describe the drama to my patient mam. I was completely hooked, and that obsession has never left me. Sadly, Ireland have not qualified for a World Cup since, leaving me still trying, and failing, to recapture that feeling. For those of you supporting nations still at this World Cup, savour every magical moment. It is a beautiful thing.

Conor O’Neill

From the Hand of God to dancing in a fountain

The television at my grandma’s house was on a mezzanine level. It wasn’t really a room, and if you leaned over the balcony you wondered if you might trip and be doomed forever. But there was a big chair there and an old TV with a busted remote control, so you had to get up to change the channel.

Sometimes I stayed the night there and as a treat, because the World Cup was on, my grandma brought dinner up on a tray to have in front of the football. I stayed up to watch Lineker’s hat-trick against Poland in 1986.

That was the first World Cup I remember watching avidly. Espana 1982 was more vague. The tackle on Patrick Battiston. Marco Tardelli’s scream. By 1986, obsession was full whack.

Of course, the Hand of God match stands out the most. What stuck in my 14-year-old mind was how the broadcast ended with a close-up still image of Maradona’s hand on the ball ahead of a flailing Peter Shilton and some incredibly sophisticated graphics of a red circle around the hand and the ball. That shot lingered for what felt like aeons.

They made it feel like the greatest injustice in the history of humankind.

The greatest injustice in the history of humankind? (Allsport/Getty Images)

But it requires a four-year fast-forward for my truly seminal World Cup experience.

Glued to the box as Maradona’s Argentina were cut down by Cameroon, an instant decision with two friends was made to immediately go to the World Cup. The next day we took trains and ferries to Italia ’90, armed with a few quid and a sleeping bag.

Turin and Genoa became the home from home for Group C (Brazil, Scotland, Sweden, Costa Rica), plus three random students.

On the day of Scotland against Sweden, everyone danced in the fountain in Genoa’s main Piazza De Ferrari for hours before marching off to the stadium together. The Italians were glorious hosts, bringing out bowls of pasta for anyone who was hungry and collections of local children to have their photographs taken with men in kilts and Viking helmets.

The mix of football, the world, happy people and life itself felt absolutely unbeatable.

Amy Lawrence

Tomas Brolin is sent sprawling by a grounded Gordon Durie as Genoa rejoices in Scotland’s win over Sweden at Italia ’90 (Bruty/Allsport)

Big Jack’s baseball cap… and a ‘magic’ wall chart

It was 1994 and the Republic of Ireland against Italy in New York.

I was only nine at the time and didn’t appreciate the scale of what the Irish were accomplishing, but I remember almost everything about that game. Ray Houghton’s goal and his clumsy little forward roll in celebration, of course, but the silly and strange things too — like how sweaty the Irish looked in the heat, Jack Charlton’s ludicrous baseball cap, and how billowy the goalnets were at Giants Stadium.

And every time I see highlights of that tournament today, I remember how the colour palette of the television broadcast was so different to anything I’d seen before. Not better or worse; just bright in the way British football never was.

Jack Charlton tries to cool down his Ireland players (Ray McManus/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

It makes me remember — and I can’t believe I’m going to commit this to public record — how much I loved my wall chart from the 1994 World Cup in the United States. It was incredibly well designed, with all these different-sized sticker flags that you affixed in the right places as teams advanced, and it was absolutely vast. Maybe a metre squared?

Each time a new tournament arrives, I buy my wall chart and quietly think about how inferior it is. Really.

You have to remember, too, that you didn’t know most of the players at tournaments then. There was no YouTube or Football Manager, meaning that you learned as you went along, game by game, with your wall chart. It was magic.

Seb Stafford-Bloor

A goofy Brazilian and a ponytail

I remember filling out a form with my mum and giving the box that said, “I will be at school early,” a big tick.

Not for extra times tables or spellings, but to watch England play Brazil at the 2002 World Cup. Kick-off was at 7.30am in England.

I couldn’t have told you then that the match was being played in Japan, or that it was a quarter-final. But I can still picture eight-year-old me sitting on a plastic chair in my primary school hall — the same room that doubled as the lunch, sports and assembly hall — as my teacher wheeled out an old black analogue television on a trolley.

The match itself is hazy. I don’t remember Michael Owen putting England ahead or Rivaldo equalising. But one image has never left me.

Ronaldinho — the one Match football magazine always drew with the goofy teeth — stands over a free kick on the right. It is miles out, surely too far to shoot. Then he spots David Seaman, who had hurt his back earlier in the game, off his line.

David Seaman can only watch as Ronaldinho’s free kick loops over him and into the net (Neal Simpson/EMPICS via Getty Images)

The ball sails over Seaman and his long ponytail, and drops into the net.

I could tell you I burst into tears because England lost, but I didn’t. I probably rushed out to the playground to recreate David Beckham’s efforts. But the fact that this is the memory that has stayed with me all these years suggests that maybe, somewhere deep down, I felt the nation’s disappointment.

Charlotte Harpur

Learning your heroes aren’t perfect

There’s a moment in every child’s life when they realise their parents are fallible.

It comes earlier for some than others, and it could be anything from burning some toast to reversing the car into a bollard. I don’t remember mine, but I do remember a similar, confusing emotion at the 1990 World Cup, when Stuart Pearce missed a penalty during England’s semi-final shootout against West Germany.

When you’re seven, your favourite player is essentially a superhero, something you vaguely recognise as a person with similar properties to the humans around you, but who is otherwise indestructible. To a Nottingham Forest fan who had been transfixed by the thrilling sight of his colossal thighs charging up and down the left flank, that’s who Pearce was to me.

So when he missed, I couldn’t compute it.

Bodo Illgner saves Stuart Pearce’s penalty (Bongarts/Getty Images)

Obviously I burst into tears, but it was through confusion rather than real heartbreak. In later years, whenever my mother wanted to embarrass me in front of a new girlfriend (so, not that often, to be fair), she wouldn’t get the baby pictures out but instead recount how I said, over and over: “But… why did he miss, mummy? Why?”

It sounds harrowing. But it taught me a key life lesson, earlier than most would learn it.

Nick Miller

Eder, Zico, Socrates and an irrepressible samba rhythm

I was only nine and football was starting to excite me, but what I saw in the summer of 1982, sitting with my family and watching the World Cup, would forever change the way I viewed the game.

My World Cup epiphany wasn’t one game or one moment, but one team. Brazil.

Having grown up watching players with first names like Trevor, Kevin and Terry, my new heroes had just one name — Zico, Falcao, Junior, Socrates and my favourite of all, Eder. Their names were exotic and so was their football, played to the samba rhythms of the fans’ drums. The goal celebrations were special, too.

There was no long-ball game and no big-man, little-man attacking combination. There was no concept of getting rid of the ball in dangerous areas. The ball was to be cherished and it would never stop moving, with quick one-twos, feints, step-overs, dummies, backheels and the free kicks. Wow, the free kicks. Zico and Eder could score them from anywhere by making the ball defy the laws of physics. It was football I had never seen before or even imagined possible.

Brazil’s class of 1982 (Peter Robinson/EMPICS via Getty Images)

How my uncles in our living room purred when Socrates scored his stunner in their first match against the Soviet Union, a game where they were heading for defeat until that moment of inspiration.

What followed remains with me to this day and began my love of the beautiful game. I never thought football could be so stunning. The square ball, the dummy, the first-touch flick into the air and the volley from Eder that sailed into the top corner to win the game.

There were so many more moments like that until they came up against the pragmatism of the Italians and it was all over. I was deflated. I had to wait another four years to see them again and, by then, the magic wasn’t quite there. And there was no Eder.

In the meantime, my Uncle Ray went to Brazil on business and brought me back a Brazil shirt. I was elated. I even hid my mild disappointment when I looked at the back and it didn’t have the No 10 of Zico or No 11 of Eder, but the No 9 of Serginho.

It was beautiful but it wasn’t perfection — just like Brazil in 1982.

Rob Tanner

Magical players, exotic names and a Kuwaiti prince

I spent the weeks leading up to the 1982 World Cup poring over books, magazines, wallcharts and the Panini sticker book — so many swaps of Poland’s Wlodzimierz Smolarek — but one thing I didn’t realise was that every game was going to be live on TV.

This was a time when live coverage of football in the UK went little beyond the FA Cup final. And now I was rushing home from school in time to see all these magical players with exotic names: Zico, Eder, Socrates and Falcao for Brazil; Platini, Giresse and Tigana for France; Conti and Rossi for Italy; Littbarski for West Germany; Maradona for Argentina.

It was such an eye-opener, a whole new world.

Everything about it was so exotic: the stadiums, the colour of the shirts, the noise of the crowd when that beautiful ball flew into those billowing nets.

Some highlights: Bryan Robson’s goal after 27 seconds for England against France; David Narey firing Scotland into a shock lead (briefly) against Brazil before an inevitable and spectacular backlash; Northern Ireland stunning hosts Spain; a Kuwaiti prince walking onto the pitch and managing to get a France goal disallowed (seriously); an incredible semi-final between France and West Germany, decided by something called a penalty shootout; outrageous Brazilian goals every time they played… and then the shock of seeing them knocked out by Italy, the eventual winners.

Sheikh Fahad al-Ahmed al-Sabah (centre), brother of the Emir of Kuwait, argues during Kuwait’s game against France in Valladolid (Georges Bendrihem/AFP via Getty Images)

I was 11 when the 1986 tournament in Mexico came around. That is a great age to enjoy a World Cup. With the seven-hour time difference, I could watch the earlier game, then record the later game (on something called a VHS cassette, kids) and get up early the next morning to watch it before school. Imagine my shock when England fell to a late winner against Portugal in their opening game.

Maradona dominated. It wasn’t just the game against England. He was unplayable against Uruguay and Belgium too. I remember friends of mine being furious about his handball against England. I was more interested in trying to ‘be’ him on the school field. I never really managed to pull it off, if I’m honest.

Oliver Kay

Panini and the glory of Mexico ’86

A month before Mexico ’86, a sticker album came with my copy of Shoot! magazine.

Glorious technicolour barely does it justice: the immaculate logo, the flags, the pastel shades and a map of Mexico on the 48th and final page of a masterpiece from Figurine Panini.

Pandora’s box had nothing on this. First came World Cup posters, stadiums and host cities, then the really good stuff. Team spreads, statistics, tables and multiple enchanting languages — Belgique-Belgie, Brasil, Deutschland-BRD and Magyarorszag. Pique, the sombrero-wearing, moustachioed jalapeno mascot (hey, it was the 1980s), was seemingly omnipresent.

I was already hooked, but just to make sure, there was a free packet of six stickers too, the swines.

The Panini album from the 1986 World Cup was a thing of beauty (Marco Bertorello/AFP via Getty Images)

After being careful to avoid any tears, the smell was intoxicating. Someone had the idea to immortalise the aroma of a freshly opened MacBook into candle scent. Just do it, Panini, take me back.

Inside were portraits ranging from angelic and baby-faced (Pierre Littbarski) to angry and bearded (Peter Disztl). Some had a superimposed kit (Pedro Pablo Pasculli), others a superimposed head (Carlo Ancelotti). The greats — Michel Platini, Diego Armando Maradona, Enzo Francescoli, Socrates and Zbigniew Boniek — looked great. And players from South Korea, Iraq, Algeria, Canada and Morocco were crammed onto a page and had to share a horizontal sticker with a team-mate.

Chuck in a shiny federation badge and a team photo, at 12 pence a pop they were too good to ignore. Especially as Tomas Boy was seemingly not included in the print run.

Diego Maradona featured on the Argentina section (Marco Bertorello/AFP via Getty Images)

The tournament was a triumph, too. The Azteca and the spidercam. The graphics on telly (the flashing ‘R’ for repeat is ingrained in my head). Vasiliy Rats and Joel Bats. France in Adidas beating Brazil in Topper for bragging rights for the best kit (and, as a footnote, a semi-final place). Gary’s Golden Boot. El Diego against England. El Diego against Belgium. El Diego against the world.

Sticker albums came and went. As did World Cups. But nothing compares to Mexico ’86.

Peter Carline