DORTMUND — For the last 30 minutes of England’s Euro 2024 semi-final, only one thought sat in my brain, an inescapable earworm: France 2022.
In Qatar’s Al Bayt Stadium, miles away from anywhere you really needed to be, England’s World Cup dream ended and we wondered if an era had ended with it. The pattern of events: England fall behind but play really well, equalise via a Harry Kane penalty, continue playing quite well but then go flat and succumb to a sucker punch.
All I’m thinking is that this is going to happen again. England had fallen behind and then played really well. England had equalised via a Harry Kane penalty. England had continued playing quite well but then had gone flat. There was even the target man former Premier League striker to do the damage. For Olivier Giroud in 2022, read Wout Weghorst in 2024.
This isn’t normal, you know. None of us should think like this. If football is to be useful to us at all it should provide enjoyment, not this all-encompassing angst that never seems to end. You’re sat watching a group of young, talented, world-wise footballers who have repeatedly shown that they have got this, but we cannot believe that they have got this because of stupid emotional preservation and scars.
That is what Germany 1996 does, when Gazza’s boots needed to be three millimetres longer. That is what Argentina 1998 does, when we played so well and lost on penalties. That is what Brazil 2002 does, when we held our own against eventual winners and lost via a freak goal. That is what France 2022 does. Unhappy endings sit in your consciousness like dark damp patches under thick wallpaper, out of sight but forever making their inevitable journey to the surface.
Maybe, just maybe, we don’t have to think like that anymore. England have won nothing yet, and will be clear second favourites against Spain on Sunday. That’s not the point. This team have been doubted and lamented and castigated by all and sundry and your mate in the pub, and they have reached their first ever final on foreign soil. Their manager has been abused and criticised online and repeated the same message: we will try our best and we will make ourselves proud.
This was not a night for individuals, unless we mention them all. A potted history of the things you will think about between now and the final, in no particular order: Kane’s penalty low into the corner; Jude Bellingham carrying the ball in injury time despite looking knackered half an hour earlier; Marc Guehi’s recovery tackle after slipping; Phil Foden’s control of the game in the first half; Kobbie Mainoo’s frankly obscene maturity; Ollie Watkins’ heaven sent touch, turn and finish. Sorry to those who have been left out – you don’t deserve that.
But we must allow the manager to take centre stage here for a while, although he is too humble to accept it and we have somehow got this far without mentioning him. When Gareth Southgate took over, England were as close to rock bottom as possible. They were a disconnected mess, world football’s sayers-but-not-doers. They had lost a manager because he had been caught in a sting and sacked the one before him for our worst result in 66 years.
Wednesday night was Southgate’s greatest triumph, not just because it is unprecedented but because he answered each of the barbs that he so routinely faces. England were superb in the first half, taking the game to the Dutch before and after their deserved equaliser – this is the football an entire country had asked for. Players fluttered into space and took on their opponents. England played fun football!
Southgate made an early change too, an easy retort to those who say he waits too long. The half-time introduction of Luke Shaw didn’t work as intended, but it did at least offer an outlet that dragged over Dutch defenders and thus created space in the penalty area. Ronald Koeman tried to kill the game; Southgate tried to win it.
Then, just as an entire country was getting in a huff about slower play and wasted opportunity, Southgate took off his captain for Ollie Watkins (a player with 20 previous minutes in the tournament) and introduced Cole Palmer too. Cut to the seconds that made us dance and scream: Palmer assist, Watkins goal. Southgate turned, screamed and reached his arms to the sky. Are you not entertained now?
HAS OLLIE WATKINS WON IT FOR ENGLAND?!
— ITV Football (@itvfootball) July 10, 2024
ASTON VILLA'S OLLIE WATKINS IS A SUPERSTAR SHOOTER!#Euro2024 | #NEDENG pic.twitter.com/67Zpbwg6QQ
As France 2022 finally leaves my mind, admittedly with a 15-minute hiatus of ohmygodhesshotanditsgoneinandtheycouldstillequaliseonlytwominuteskeeptheballholdtheballhesgoingtoblowthisisthegreatestmoment, it is replaced by another England-adjacent memory.
There is a litmus test of whether you are a true England supporter, you see. It is based not on match attendance nor owning the shirt, but on the number of times you have watched the glorious, unsurpassed BBC Sport montage of the penalty shootout against Colombia in 2018. More than once a week during this tournament and you’re in the club. We have badges.
The last scene of that montage has a waistcoated Southgate screaming in pleasure, those poses that we see far too rarely: England’s safest man losing his s**t. The closing commentary plays: “Maybe times are changing. This team is changing things.”
And that’s it really, isn’t it. No football team owes anyone a major tournament victory, although they will try their damnedest on Sunday. No individual can do more than their best and we can never demand more. All we asked for, during those dismal, dark days, was an England that changed things for the better, on and off the pitch. In Dortmund on Wednesday evening, they moved mountains.
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