So despite my previous post, I'm not in much of a gloating mood to see England go out. As I said, I have complicated feelings about them, and so while I can't properly get excited to see them win, I also can't get too depressed to see them go out. And I have to give them credit for getting this far, after years of, to be honest, rank underachievement.
It's funny that the Lightning Seeds song, Three Lions, was dusted off and resurrected for this World Cup campaign, as not only does it date from the last tournament in which England reached a semi-final, but it's also from the first tournament where I followed England. Those are names to conjure with, you know: Paul Gascoigne, Alan Shearer, Teddy Sheringham, David Seaman... maybe not as revered as the Class of 1966, but still recent enough that they haven't faded into history as untouchable icons the way Jack and Bobby Charlton have, or Sir Bobby Moore, or Geoff Hurst...
That's also the first (and last) time I saw London completely spellbound by the national team, to the point of knowing how the game was going by the sounds I heard as I walked outside on the street. I'm sure it would have been like that this year, although I get the sense that the mode of celebrating wins and goals this time around has been communally, at pubs, and throwing all your beers in the air when something good happens.
From there England became a quarter-finals team. That's the stage at which they left the next three World Cups, in 1998, 2002 and 2006. They had slightly more mixed fortunes in the European championships, going out of the group stage in 2000, losing in the quarter-final to France in 2004, and not even qualifying for 2008.
1998 is my other abiding memory of that England team of the 90s, capped by watching their 2-2 draw against Argentina at my friend Sean's house, a game that still resonates in the English psyche now. Michael Owen's run to score a wonderful individual goal, David Beckham's tussle with Diego Simeone and his sending-off, Sol Campbell's disallowed header that would have put them through...
Somehow, something changed in the squad with the turn of the millennium. Gascoigne and Shearer and the like were stars, but they weren't STARS, the way Beckham became, and it's possible the players started to believe their own hype too much. In my last post I mentioned an incident, which occurred in the 2006 quarter-final against Portugal, where David Beckham and Wayne Rooney both left the pitch in tears, wound up to the back teeth by Cristiano Ronaldo's play-acting and the Portuguese gamesmanship more generally - but also a sense that they weren't being allowed to play as they wanted.
Even now, 12 years later, I look back on that display with distaste. Not because of the crying, per se, but because those were spoiled children's tears. Paul Gascoigne's tears in the 1990 semi-final were an emotional outpouring at being denied a spot in the final (and one that I didn't see, as I wasn't following football back then) - Beckham and Rooney were crying because things didn't go their way.
But even before then, I remember how cock-sure England and its fans were in the run-up to the tournament. Mars bars changed their names to "Believe", and Michael Owen confidently predicted he'd pick up the golden boot, despite not scoring and tearing his ACL less than a minute into the third group match against Sweden, which ended his tournament. After England went out, a shell-shocked friend confessed he'd really thought they could do it this time, which always mystified me - it didn't look that different a squad than the one I'd previously seen in 2004.
But enough about the past - what about this England? I don't know if they played that amazingly well this year, thinking about it objectively. They were deadly on set pieces, and Harry Kane is well-positioned to bring home the golden boot (the first English player to do so since Gary Lineker in 1986), which speaks for itself, but in the games I saw, they never looked that incisive in front of goal. Which isn't necessarily a criticism of England, because I think a lot of teams struggled with that, but it's a clear weakness to be addressed.
By the way, I'm aware of the 6-1 drubbing of Panama, and know that logically it can't have only consisted of penalties and set-piece goals. But without taking anything away from England, Panama was a terrible, terrible team, and England has always benefited from these early mismatches.
Which is, incidentally, the other point worth highlighting about this team, as opposed to previous tournaments. Between 2002 and 2016 there was always something a bit ponderous and yet still lackadaisical about them. The worst example was (again) 2006, where the team came in with high expectations from themselves and their fans, bolstered in particular by the famous 5-1 victory against Germany in Munich, but were dull, plodding and not at all fun to watch in the first two matches against Paraguay and Trinidad & Tobago.
I remember at the first game the embarrassed looks on the faces of Gary Lineker and the rest of the BBC commentators when the cameras cut to them at half-time. England had looked so bad, so unlike the swashbuckling heroes that they always fancy themselves, that it was as if a team of ringers from a local pub had somehow infiltrated the England camp and made it onto the field at Frankfurt - that was probably the moment that the next ten years were decided for the team.
So, to come back to this England squad, I have to single out in particular Gareth Southgate for praise. He's done a good job of building on the good work done by his predecessor Roy Hodgson (and his one-game predecessor Sam Allardyce), but seems to have also done a good job of creating a cohesive team, rather than stuffing it with all the big names and egos - after all, one of the criticisms leveled at Hodgson was his seeming inability to stand up to star players who were probably past it, like Wayne Rooney in 2016.
And I have to give special credit to Southgate for preparing England for its first World Cup penalty shootout win. He is, after all, the man who missed the decisive penalty back in 1996, so it makes sense that he'd have them train on that specific aspect of the game.
I found myself consoling a friend after the match today, one of the ones who was insisting I get on the England bandwagon. Not wanting to gloat, I instead suggested that he look at this as a great achievement (which it is) and as a chance for England to build into a team that really can challenge in the years to come (which is also true). In fact, as I was talking to him I was reminded of another team from 2006, one that seemed to burst out of nowhere with feats of athleticism and team cohesion. I'm referring to Germany, of course, which made it to the semi-finals that year and in 2010 before winning in 2014.
That's not a bad template to follow, and if England can replicate that run of form, then it really will be coming home.
(To be followed by a humiliating group stage exit four years later, but hey...)
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