OLYMPIASTADION BERLIN — Two finals, two defeats. Nobody can argue that it is worse to put your head above the parapet and allow yourself to be hurt so badly than to endure none of these nights at all. Hope is the cruellest emotion but life is more desperate without it. But hurt is still hurt and it still hurts like hell.
At full-time, England’s players all stood in the same position, hunched forwards with their hands on their knees. They were broken, knackered, beaten. Not a single England supporter left the Olympiastadion, instead waited to applaud those who they have grown to love so dearly. Whatever happens now, the connections made here and before cannot be allowed to go to waste.
Spain were the better team in June and in July too. They were magnificent from Croatia to England, fully deserved winners for the fourth time. They had scored more goals than England, conceded fewer and left better teams chewing dust than England too. They dominated possession to start with – it was nine minutes until England had a spell of pressure-free possession – and then cut England open with counter-attacks in the second half. They can do it all ways.
For a while, just like in 2021, belief didn’t feel cheap. The substitutes worked again and Cole Palmer made the breathtaking look easy. But this was a temporary interlude to the general patterns, and general patterns tend to produce predictable results. It would have been an upset if anything other than Spain exerting their summer-long dominance had occurred.
In some quarters there will be recriminations for Gareth Southgate (obviously, have you been following?). People have deliberately waited for this moment all summer. His is a management style by which success is predicated by winning.
The price you pay for opening a country’s eyes to what might eventually be, pleasant lands over dusty decades of nothingness, is that you become by the standards you set rather than the standards of those who came before you.
England have come so close and Southgate will be sold as the nearly man when all we ever want is everything. That is his cross to bear now. On Friday, England’s manager spoke to assembled media and reiterated just how much he yearned for this ending to be different.
He doesn’t deserve that grief. They demanded that Southgate released the shackles for the biggest matches. Call it desperation if you like; I’m happy to err on the side of courage.
When England scored their equaliser, Declan Rice was effectively playing as a one-man central midfield. Their manager, supposedly tactically conservative, had accepted that England had lost out in the jabs and intended to make it a slugfest.
This is going to shock you: it was too open. England played on their edge, as they have all tournament, but this time in search of ludicrous victory when perhaps settling for extra-time and stodging things up might have done. Do not ignore the delicious irony: England went too attacking under the manager they said would never attack.
And yet despite all that, there were fine margins to clang against Spain’s dominance. When you watch back the montages of this tournament before the next World Cup, see those three bounces of the ball at that late corner as the final headed into stoppage time. Save, clearance off the line, header over the bar. With it went England’s shot at ending their hurt. It will continue for goodness knows how much longer.
The angst that has surrounded England at Euro 2024 was surely based partly on real-time evidence (people demanded that England attack because that seemed to them the best form of defence), but also – if you’ll forgive the cod philosophy – was rooted in our own history of underachievement and despair.
When you repeatedly fall short, when you are world champions and when your club teams are dominant in Europe, through golden generations and beloved, respected managers, it creates a demand that stretches beyond glory. We didn’t just dream of winning; we built the eventual bliss into something chimerical: a sea of 4-1 vs the Dutch and 5-1 vs the Germans.
The England manager could never hope to escape that false reality. For all the magnificent work Southgate did in creating the culture in which sustainable growth was not just possible but inevitable, it was never going to be enough. For the dream to be fulfilled, England needed a cult leader. What it got was an outrageously good man-manager who never strayed from his own faith in how an international drought could be ended.
Southgate may well walk away now. Those who appreciate him most, perhaps counterintuitively, privately hope that that is his call as much as fierce critics do. The lowest moments of the last two and a half years – Hungary 0-4, the sluggish European Championship group stages and Nations League relegation – have brought harsh censure that culminated in those beer cups in Cologne.
It would be a great shame if that was allowed to escalate further and the next tournament cycle is tough: the draining summer heat of the USA, Mexico and Canada. Best to let someone else have a go. And if a replacement takes this on and realises the national desperation for a major tournament win, Southgate laid the foundations.
None of this matters now. Bitterness and resentment is allowed to bubble at the surface because this isn’t a school sports day. You enter tournaments to win them and thus this becomes a failure – Southgate himself will say as much. We should congratulate the best team at Euro 2024 on their imperious run under a coach created in one of the most effective systems in world football.
But a plea, if anyone will listen: this doesn’t have to be the end of anything. We don’t have to launch another root-and-branch review nor fire up the witch-hunt machine. England have tried and fallen and tried and fallen time and time again; now they’re doing it at the sharpest end. That’s why the cuts feel so deep.