England come close, and now is the time to remember how far they've come

They came so close, but nowhere near close enough. But England, whose women's football story is defined by the FA's ban, should remember how far they've come.

There’s no Sunday remaster this week, my babbies. Instead, it’s been the Women’s World Cup final this morning and it’s been emotional.

So it ends here, then. The first England team to reach a (football) World Cup final in 57 years will return home without silverware. In the end, Spain were just a little bit too clever, a little bit too professional, a little bit too polished, and their win is absolutely justified under circumstances which it should have been unimaginable. This is a World Cup win like no other in the history of the game for men or women, one in which the players celebrated separately to the coaching staff at the final whistle.

By the end of the first half, the game felt as though it should already have been in the palm of Spain’s hand. They took the lead just before the half hour, Olga Carmona sweeping a low shot across Mary Earps from a break after Lucy Bronze seemed to have a rush of blood to the head, carried the ball into the middle of the pitch, a couple of steps too far, and lost possession. They’d already carved out one clear chance, from which they should have taken the lead, when a low cross found Salma Paralluelo with almost the entire goal open to aim at, only for her shot to screw across and into Earps’ grateful arms.

It wasn’t that England didn’t have their chances. That one fell just a couple of minutes after a long-range shot from Lauren Hemp rattled their crossbar, and although Spain dominated possession—Japan beat them 4-0 with 23% possession, so this was to be expected—when they broke it seemed reasonably fluid, just lacking a final pass, and you only need to find one of those once. But as the half progressed, Spain grew while England shrank, and their opponents’ domination of possession started to feel more like the threat that had been feared, rather than the necessary consequence to be dealt with that had been hoped for.

Much of the pre-match talk started to sound like nonsense, as the half proceeded, in particular the amount of importance placed on the experience of having played in World Cup finals before. That felt as though it counted for very little by half-time when, under the glare of floodlights that shone harsh lights upon the technicalities of the game, were showing primarily that England couldn’t get a foot on the ball to cause much of a threat in the first place.

Wiegman wielded the axe at half-time, introducing Chloe Kelly and Lauren James. The dilemma to pick James after serving her two-match suspension was one of the talking points of the period since she was shown her red card against Nigeria. A three-match ban was avoided, but considering how good England’s performance had been in the semi-final against Australia, she decided to stick with what she had. By half-time it was clear that this hadn’t worked. But that’s the gamble, really. They don’t always pay off.

A change of formation took a period of adjustment, and in the meantime there were chances at each end, Earps saved smartly from Mariona Caldentey at one end, Hemp shot narrowly wide on the break, Aitana Bonmati shot inches over. But midway through the second half came the moment which should have put the game beyond reasonable doubt.

That the ball hit Keira Walsh’s hand wasn’t in question. The eventual decision was a penalty. Her hand was not considered to be in a ‘natural’ position, as per the modern argot. After yet another lengthy delay after Jennifer Hermoso tried to place the ball on the six yard line to save it, her low shot was superbly saved by Earps, whose florid reaction to the save would have turned the air extremely blue indeed, had she been audible above the din of the crowd.

The minutes ticked down, and the chances came sparingly, in no small part because there were so many very lengthy stoppages that it actually felt like there’d been little open play, which is . Almost immediately from the penalty, England broke and Spain goalkeeper Catalina Coll had to rush from her penalty area to head clear. Lauren James found some space and the left and forced an excellent one-handed save from Coll.

But still the problems continued to mount up, with a lengthy delay after Alex Greenwood, arguably their player of the tournament, took a knee to the face with just under fifteen minutes to play. With her head in a bandage like Steve Foster’s errant daughter, she soldiered on. As the clock ticked over 90, the reason for that earlier feeling of, ‘there hasn’t been much football in this half, has there?’ got its explanation. Another thirteen were to be added. Almost a third of the second half taken had been up with stuff and shenanigans.

And in truth, they probably could have played another 130 minutes and England may well not have scored. Their movement towards attacking positions continued to feel unplanned, too often relying on a predictable pattern of trying to surge forward through the middle (unsuccessfully) or speculative-looking long balls aimed in the general direction of somebody presumably (also unsuccessfully).

Spain were successfully running down the clock with ease, even though they might have lost Paralluelo to a second yellow card for kicking the ball away. By the time they passed the midway point in that thirteen minutes, they’d created nothing whatsoever. England were still running. Still—not insignificantly—throwing their bodies in front of the ball. At one point Alex Greenwood, like an Egyptian mummy giving chase, tore a full fifty yards to put in an excellent Bobby Moore-esque tackle and win possession back for them.

But by the second half of stoppage-time the ball was just lodged in the England half, and broadly in possession of a team who were in no hurry to do anything whatsoever, and understandably so. The game moved into stoppage-time for the stoppage-time, but even one final England corner kick wasn’t good enough. The whistle blew, and Spain were the world champions, and deservedly so. Their story over the last few years has in many respects defied both logic and belief, and they are worthy winners of this tournament.

The story doesn’t end here, for England. What they need to do is embrace what they’re feeling today and what they’ll feel tomorrow. Resolve not to put yourself in the position in which you felt as much pain as you did when that full-time whistle blew again. And they should also remember how close they came. They lost some of their best players to injury, survived a penalty shootout against Nigeria and falling behind to Colombia, and comfortably beat a strong host nation in a semi-final which looked very much like a banana skin waiting to be slipped upon.

But their story goes back further than that. Branded into the soul of women’s football in England is the half-century FA ban which only ended in 1971. The development of women sacrificed at the altar of preserving fragile male egos. Ever was it thus. We can only wonder what progress might have been made, not just in this country but globally, had the huge successes of Kerr, Dick Ladies been embraced rather than put in a box. Regardless of their rights or wrongs, the values and views of the FA carried significant weight in those days. They played a substantial role in a global delegitimisation of women’s football that lasted for decades.

So this team is standing on the shoulders of giants, from the British Ladies Football Club, who played at the end of the 19th century to such hostility that they had to use assumed names, the players of Dick, Kerr Ladies, the other munitions factory teams of the First World War, and the English Ladies Football Association, the short-lived body which sought to arrange a women’s competition after the FA’s ban.

From those who formed the Women’s Football Association in 1969, to the teams who played through the 1970s and 1980s, with zero support whatsoever from a men’s game which had already done enough damage by banning them for so long. Even after the ban was lifted, the FA didn’t deign to get involved until 1992. These people, clubs and organisations ensured that the flame was never fully extinguished.

In October 2014, the New Statesman reported on the growth of women’s football from the standpoint of a match between Arsenal and Liverpool, and one question stood out beyond any other:

Like most games in the Women’s Super League (WSL), the highest league for women’s football in the UK, there were around 5-600 spectators. It was a healthy showing in this small stadium, but no comparison to the tens of thousands that turn out to watch Arsenal or Liverpool men’s teams to play in Premier League matches. Could women’s football ever match the men’s game?

Well, whether full equality can be achieved remains debatable. The men’s game did have more than a century’s head start. But the progress made in recent years, the opportunities that it has offered to young female players has been little short of incredible to witness. And England’s players returning home from this tournament should be proud of what they’ve already achieved. Champions of Europe. Runners-up in the world. It remains the case that they remain a step ahead of the men’s team in recent competitions, but on this occasion that final step was just the one too far. But while this tournament may well end here, the next one is just around the corner.