John Stones He collapsed onto his back and gazed up at the stars. Declan Rice He fell to his knees. Phil Foden He crouched in the dugout and stared into the distance. Jude Bellingham He stomped over to the England bench and vented his anger into a blue bucket of ice-cold drinks. Cole Palmer I walked over and sat on the ice, while the staff apologetically moved the ice with their feet.
This is what it’s like when a lifelong dream is shattered not once, but twice in the space of three years.
Over the past few weeks, England Fate seemed on their side, as if they had some kind of protective aura that would carry them through the tournament and perhaps even make their mark on history. How else to explain the incredible series of comebacks, the salvation of individual heroism that got them to Berlin? And after Palmer scored another sublime equaliser in the final and the stadium erupted in British cheers, it was easy to believe they were on their way to the greatest comeback of all time.
But if anyone believed England had finally transformed into a winning machine, creating an ominous international inevitability; real madridand they discovered, with great shock, pain and tears, that their opponents were a winning machine after all. Because if England had been relying on momentum and magic in the final minutes, Spain They kept their cool and scored the winning goal.
A win would have made this team immortal, but this defeat will also go down in history. Everyone here knows that this was, for better or worse, a defining moment in English football, the climax of the Southgate era. The longest and most significant losing streak in sports.
Of course, there will be plenty of desperate phone consultations and agonising Wise Scouting hours ahead. People will want blame, a full explanation for why England failed to win again. That’s what we want from a final, a definitive judgement, a belated clarification on the questions we’ve all been worrying about. And this match was set to give us final clarification about Southgate, about the past eight years, about whether gasballing was the way forward for England, or its only hindrance.
Palmer celebrates the goal that gave England brief hope (Eddie Keogh – The FA/The FA via Getty Images)
But in the end, this was just a 90-minute football match, a messy and contingent place where nothing was as inevitable as it might be expected.
Spain were clearly better than England. Far better. They were the best team in the tournament, controlling the ball, using their sharp wingers and playing like a high-spec club team. Putting magic aside for a moment, England clearly struggled. They had a day less to prepare, both the round of 16 and quarter-final games went into extra time and, most importantly, they just didn’t play as well as their opponents.
So England came in with a strategy: they looked content to sit back and defend in a 4-5-1. Bukayo Saka Cover Kyle Walker Deployed as an extra full-back, they wanted to stop Spain converting the ball into chances and in the first half they did just that brilliantly. Their organisation was impeccable, their tackles and blocks heroic and you might have imagined Southgate would have been happier at half-time.
But there were two problems. First, England barely had the ball. Second, they were so focused on defense that it’s nearly impossible to play perfectly all night. Sure enough, two minutes after the restart, England lost concentration and fell behind.
Some brave substitutions from manager Southgate helped us get back into the game. Ollie Watkins for Harry Kanehe, TottenhamIn the 2019 Champions League final LiverpoolAnd Palmer Kobe MainuThree minutes later, Palmer equalised for England. For a few minutes it felt like history had turned in their favour. Eventually, England were running out of steam.
So what to make of all this? Because at the end of the day we need Southgate’s conclusion, the final judgement from this. It feels unfair to blame him for England’s defeat when they were clearly beaten by a superior team. Some will say the game plan in the first half was too passive, that if England had taken it to Spain they could have disrupted the source of the pass instead of sitting back and waiting for the ball to bounce in their direction.
Perhaps it would have taken a courageous manager to play higher up the pitch. Ramin Yamal and Nico Williams And then there was the even braver strategy of pressing high in the final, at the end of an exhausting tournament. England’s strategy was passive, but it may have been the best to stay in the game as long as possible. They needed to be perfect, and they weren’t.
Playing high up is a risky strategy against a player like Williams (Edith Geppert – GES Sportfoto/Getty Images)
If we’re generous to Southgate, we could say England have struggled more here than they did in their last defeat. Italy Three years ago, England were 1-0 up against a smart but unspectacular team before losing their cool, drawing and then losing on penalties. Tonight, at least England emerged from a whirlwind of passing plays against a better team and clawed their way back into the match.
Southgate’s bravery in bringing on Watkins and Palmer from the bench could also be pointed to as an improvement from 2021. It’s fair to wonder whether Watkins should have played from the start, given that he has looked so much sharper than Kane. Nothing Kane did in his hour on the pitch suggested he should have been in the game.
Ultimately, tonight’s Italy final, and the pain the players felt as they watched their opponents lift the trophy, has to do with a fundamental failure to keep the ball in the most pressure-filled moments. Southgate was forthright after the game that this was the problem. He pointed to extenuating circumstances, the physical strain on the players and internal issues within the squad, but he also knows they have limitations. “We have to hold our hands up and admit, Spain were better,” Southgate said. “In the end, that’s what it all comes down to.”
The reasons why Spain can play like that and England can’t are so deep-rooted that it seems unfair to pin the blame on Southgate’s decisions this month, but after eight years in charge and two final losses, no matter how close those games were, many England fans will go back on Monday thinking that a different manager might have a fresh approach to solving the problem.
(Top photo: Stuart Forster/Getty Images)
