There's no professional match more worthless than the World Cup's third place play-off. Even the NFL's Pro Bowl, which fills the gap between the Championship game and the Super Bowl, and which absolutely should be replaced with a game of Total Wipeout, is ostensibly an all-star game rewarding the best players from the NFC and AFC. The World Cup's bronze medal game is instead basically a loser's bracket and even though there is something tangible, the moment has passed for everyone involved. No one cares.

This can lead to some interesting games. In 2010, Germany (beaten by Spain) and Uruguay (beaten by the Netherlands) had a wide open game thriller that ended 3-2 to Die Mannschaft. In 2014, the Netherlands (beaten by Argentina) beat the dead horse of Brazil (beaten severely by Germany) who went into the game still shell-shocked from their 7-1 loss in the semifinal and found themselves toyed with for 90 minutes. Even though they beat the Selecao 3-0, the Netherlands almost seemed embarrassed to be there and Robin Van Persie famously gave away his medal to a fan as soon as he received it.

This tournament's third place play-off between Belgium (beaten by France) and England (beaten by Croatia) ended up somewhere in between, playing out less like a genuine match and more like a postmodern piece of footballing performance art. It can't be reiterated enough just how meaningless this part of the World Cup is and yet the opening salvo showed that a win was 51-to-49 percent more desired by Belgium than England.

As potential winners, up to a point, and a legacy that has a lone highlight in a fourth place finish at Mexico '86, Belgium went into this game looking to go at least one step further than that footnote; England, on the other hand, had already done enough. Their semifinal appearance matched the team's best international progress in 28 years of hard graft, and they didn't need to do any more. Football had been brought home in the metaphorical sense of the word. Nobody remembers England losing 2-1 to Italy at Italia '90 anyway. No one would remember this.

England started off the rematch as they always do with every game, feeling the opponent out, and Belgium grabbed the ball, sprinted down the pitch and had Nacer Chadli send a cross into the box that was awkwardly caught on the shin by Thomas Meunier, who had muscled his way through England's midfield and defensive lines, and sent home for an easy 1-0. 

Novelist Paul Auster is known for his love of baseball, but this edition of the beautiful game played out like something he'd written: An opening event – a murder, a plane crash; in our case, a goal – leads to a web of vagaries that doesn't necessarily lead anywhere and only keeps the audience interested with flashes of stylistic brilliance.

Beyond these opening five minutes, the match played out as a metaphor, as symbolism, that can be ascribed with whatever meaning you would like. As if the goal hadn't even happened, neither side played to win, nor did they play to lose or draw and the crowd didn't appear to have an interest in any of the three possible results either, alternating between jeers, larking about with Mexican Waves and supplying the generic white noise atmosphere of a game played on Pro Evolution Soccer.

For England manager Gareth Southgate, this open-endedness is a gift and a curse. His team's criticism throughout the tournament is that they were often lucky, drawn against mediocre teams and that their lack of goals from open play showed a lack of quality up front. The way Belgium repeatedly ripped England in half – often at will, always with ease – combined with the total absence of goalscoring menace proved those critics correct, or would have, were this not the third place play-off, a game where nobody tries their best.

At half time, Southgate swapped Danny Rose and Raheem Sterling for Jesse Lingard and Marcus Rashford in a move that, in line with the rest of the fixture, was either a continuation of the give-them-a-game mentality that leads to odd combinations or a genuine attempt to assuage the concern that Belgium would get bored and tonk the Three Lions into oblivion. After all, Rose had been anonymous all game and Sterling's pace, which was intended to strike fear into defences and force them to open up, hadn't been effective since early on in the clash with Sweden, so it wasn't exactly a big loss or major tactical upheaval.

Belgium kept at it, ripping England to shreds when they could be bothered and letting them keep the ball when they couldn't. At the 70th minute, for a flicker, England were in it: Rashford found Eric Dier with space behind the Belgian line, he was one-on-one with Thibaut Courtois and he chipped it over the keeper into an open net – only for Alderweireld to dash in and clear it off the line.

That indignity was enough for Belgium. After all the tricks and curlicues they had tried for 78 minutes, they made it 2-0 when Eden Hazard snapped and bossed his way in an almost perfect straight line down the pitch, through Phil Jones and smashed the ball into the bottom corner.

Twice England played Belgium in this World Cup and twice they were decisively beaten and yet neither time felt like a real contest. Both sides were through already in the group stage and neither side were through to the final here, so neither played like their heart was in it for either game. For the sake of England's pride, maybe it's best if the teams keep it that way.