All told, it feels like the classic end to the coming-of-age movie this Sunday: Frenkie De Jong already off to Barcelona and Matthijs De Ligt bound for somewhere equally impressive, framed by some sort of finale in Porto.

Genre convention dictates that it must culminate with a bittersweet life lesson to send our heroes on their way, the question being whether the Nations League is able to deliver that kind of final scene resonance. It does not even have its own Uefa anthem.

No limit on the ambitions of these two boys, as their victory over England on Thursday showed. De Jong, older of the two, still very much the virtuoso graduate student delighting in his precocity before it is co-opted and monetized by a much greater power.

This is his last summer of freedom before he steps into big football where it will become as much about what he fails to do as what he accomplishes.

From now on his every touch, pass completion, goal (expected or real), plotted against the axis of the millions and millions of euros invested in him.