When Gareth Southgate was in the United States in February to attend the 52nd Super Bowl in Minneapolis he grasped the opportunity to take in a basketball match. It featured the Minnesota Timberwolves against the Milwaukee Bucks but Southgate was not there to munch popcorn and enjoy himself.
The England manager had an idea in his head as he took the train to the Target Center where the Timberwolves play - he wanted to talk to the team's owner Glen Taylor about how the NBA club operates but he also wanted to see, out on the basketball court, where it is five versus five, how players find space, and also the tactics that were being used to block off opponents in tight areas. A bit like, in fact, how footballers deal with corners and free-kicks.
Fast forward to last Sunday and observe how Ashley Young subtly, legally but clearly blocked off Michael Murrillo, the Panama defender whose duty it was to mark John Stones while his team-mates grappled with Harry Kane and Harry Maguire. Stones ran free and headed home Kieran Trippier's eighth minute corner in Nizhny Novgorod to set England on the way to their 6-1 victory.
Maybe it was a coincidence. But Southgate, his assistant Steve Holland and strikers coach Allan Russell have worked hard on England's set-piece routines at this World Cup. On match days the players even walk through the various scenarios and it seems highly unlikely that Southgate has not adopted some of the techniques he saw that night in Minneapolis.
More than any other England manager Southgate has deliberately gathered information from other sports - tactical, technical but also psychological - and applied them to football. That is from NBA and American football, where he has visited the Seattle Seahawks, New England Patriots and Minnesota Vikings, but also rugby union, cricket, athletics, boxing, swimming and even canoe slalom and short-track speed skating where Holland has spoken to Nicky Gooch, the coach of the Olympian Elise Christie.