Spain 2-1 England (Williams 47′, Oyarzabal 86′ | Palmer 73′)
OLYMPIASTADION BERLIN — When will it ever end?
58 years of hurt, and counting. The wait for a major men’s tournament trophy will hit a seventh decade by the time the next World Cup comes along. It feels like a lifetime — it has quite literally been one.
Yet another supremely gifted crop of English footballers have gone further than many of the generations before, but still not all the way, ultimately outplayed by Spain and deservedly beaten.
Gareth Southgate has done so much to change perceptions of the England national team, internally and externally. England didn’t get to this stage consistently in World Cups and European Championships before Southgate reluctantly took the job and went from caretaker to centurion, the final his 102nd game in charge.
But does any of it matter if they can’t win something?
How does a nation that produces such talented footballers fail so spectacularly when it comes to the big stage?
Paul Gascoigne, Paul Scholes, Alan Shearer, David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Wayne Rooney, Gary Lineker, Ashley Cole, Rio Ferdinand, Kevin Keegan, Harry Kane.
Kane and his teammates in Germany, the great and good of football, able between them to open a football museum with all the trophies and winners’ medals they have collected in club football over the past few years.
It seems to make no sense. But maybe football doesn’t have to make sense — maybe that’s its mysterious beauty. Nothing made sense about the chaos of England’s route to the final: a turgid, disjointed group stage, Jude Bellingham’s overhead kick in the last-16, Bukayo Saka’s long-range strike and a near perfect penalty shootout in the quarter-final, Ollie Watkins’s instinctive stoppage-time winner in the semi.
Against Spain there would be no such heroics.
England had to survive an early swarm of passes from Spain that threatened to engulf them. The Spain players so calm and relaxed about the whole thing that they could’ve been playing on Ipanema Beach with caipirinhas in hand, and not the Euro 2024 final. England’s players chased where passes might go, followed their trajectories, ran after the idea of them, without actually winning the ball.
It was twitchy. Declan Rice lost the ball on half-way, Phil Foden was dispossessed just outside England’s penalty area. But while Jordan Pickford was busy, he was not overtaxed.
Tensions rose. Rice took a foot to the hip. Bellingham and Foden knocks to ankles. Saka shoved over Marc Cucurella; Cucurella pushed Foden to the floor.
For 45 minute, Luke Shaw, making his first start of the tournament — his first in 148 days — schooled young Lamine Yamal, a day after his 17th birthday, on Spain’s right. Bellingham nipped and bit and battled, winning the ball whenever he could.
But still it took until the 45th minute for England’s first shot on target — a Rice free kick swung to Foden at the back post who did well to steer it towards goal, but did not trouble Unai Simon.
Goalless at the break, Rodri was forced off injured. Spain’s most important player. There was that glimmer of hope. Could it be? Would that destabilise Spain’s midfield, know them off balance?
And then they scored, almost straight from kick-off.
Yamal finally got the better of Shaw, England scrambled, Kyle Walker lost Nico Williams and the teenager found him with a low pass that Williams finished off.
The England fans sang for Watkins, and on the hour Southgate subbed off captain Kane, who had touched the ball fewer times than anyone else on the pitch, including the goalkeepers.
The only choice, but a courageous one, and the next was arguably ballsier: swapping Kobbie Mainoo for Cole Palmer with 20 minutes remaining — conceding a midfield against the midfield masters for an extra forward.
Three minutes later England broke, Saka down the right, the ball into Bellingham, the lay-off for Palmer, the player with the coldest left foot in the Premier League guiding the ball into the far corner with icy precision.
Pickford was superb, saving twice from Yamal, cutting out crosses, shouting orders. But Spain simply looked like scoring and he could do nothing to stop Mikel Oyarzabal beating him with four minutes left.
And that was it — England going home, empty handed, yet again.
Player of the match: Jordan Pickford
- Did his best to keep England in the game but he could do nothing about the goals
In the days, weeks, months, the years ahead, let’s try to remember that it’s only a game of football — 22 players kicking a ball around a pitch, two coaches on the touchlines pulling strings, a referee presiding over things.
But then why does it hurt so much? Why is it that England making it all the way to the final, for the second successive European Championship, makes the pain even more acute?
Perhaps all of this can be the springboard for a period of English dominance on the world stage. Other nations have consistently reached these finals over the years. Can England, now, too?
The fear is that it isn’t the spark that lights the fire — that it’s an anomaly, a glitch in the matrix, a glorious period in the nation’s football history the like of which will not be seen again, for a long time.
It feels quaint now, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner singing about “30 years of hurt” almost 30 years ago. Who would have believed it when they penned the famous “it’s coming home!” line back then, that it still wouldn’t be here so many decades later.