Euro 2024; England finally hit their comedown

England were beaten by the best team in the tournament at the end of a tournament which was a strange mix of the good, the bad and the ugly.

Football can be an extremely complicated game, and football can be an extremely simple game. Most of the time it is both at the same time. But sometimes the narrative arc is just plain simple. They gave it everything they could, but ultimately England were beaten in the final of Euro 2024 by the best team in the tournament, and that’s not a conclusion of which anybody connected should feel ashamed.

Because this is the England men’s national team, there are also noisy conversations to be had. There will also be some degree of vituperation in the air, because it appears to be the case that this is simply just how some people process disappointment. But the story of the night, told in the broadest brush strokes possible, remains the story of the night.

The first half ended with nothing between Spain and England. Spain dominated possession, but didn’t do much with it. England didn’t go for the blitzkrieg start that had surprised the Netherlands even after going an early goal down. But while they may have had substantially less possession than Spain, they made better use of it, even though shots on goal were notable primarily by their absence. In first half stoppage-time, Phil Foden had the best half-chance of the first 45 minutes, but he was off-balance when shooting and while he did well to get a shot on target at all from such an awkward position, it didn’t unduly trouble Unai Simon.

It is fair to ask the question of what on earth might have happened in the England dressing room during the half-time interval. Because when the teams came back out for the second half, they played as though they’d been drugged. The two teams immediately started doing all the things they hadn’t been doing in the first half. The result of this was instantaneous and, for England at least, catastrophic.

Rodri had been withdrawn by Spain with an injury at half-time, and with a fully functioning midfield they took 80 seconds to take the lead, with 11 Spain players completed a pass before a single England player did. It was a beautiful move, sweeping through a defence which looked like it had been given a mug of Ovaltine at half-time, finished by Nico Williams.

Game management had taken England to where they were by half-time, but by the 70th minute Jordan Pickford was keeping them in the game. The Harry Kane experiment ended on the hour, the clearly unfit captain replaced by Ollie Watkins. England immediately looked sprightlier than they had during the previous 25 minutes, although they were still clinging on by their fingernails for a while.

But then came another substitution from the manager who can’t do substitutions. Presumably coincidentally, when Cold Cole Palmer was introduced his impact was immediate, a low shot skidding into the bottom corner barely a couple of minutes following his introduction. Yet another jolt of that lightning that has, for all the talk of torpor, become quite familiar this last four weeks.

There were three and a bit minutes to play when Mikel Oyarzabal pushed the winning goal over the line to restore Spain’s lead, but even then there still fell that one last chance. Simon saved excellently from Declan Rice and Marc Guehi’s header was then brilliantly cleared off  the line. A heart-stopping moment that might have forced the game into an extra thirty minutes.

But even with stoppage-time to play and this England team being the most likely in the tournament to be able to force another one last chance, seasoned watchers already knew just how exceptionally rare these are, still less converted. That had been the one last chance. The game was up, once and for all. If anything, the stoppage-time was an opportunity to collect your thoughts and come to terms with the imminent blowing of the final whistle.

International football is not the same as club football, and Gareth Southgate is an excellent manager. The FA is a strange beast, with tentacles down as far as the grassroots and the bottom of the non-league game while also running the England teams, owning Wembley Stadium itself, and occasionally even overseeing what passes for governance of the game in this country.

Understanding that strangeness and being able to work those corridors is a singular skillset, and Southgate’s previous employment within the FA seems to have given him it. You can’t simply transplant a great club manager into this position and expect them to achieve perfection. It’s like throwing a cheetah into a river and expecting it to hunt like a crocodile.

And there’s also the not-inconsiderable matter of the ambassadorial nature of the position. Southgate has led this team with dignity and emotional intelligence. In a period during which everything feels politicised, the tightrope that he’s had to walk has become increasingly thin, but he’s done so in a way of which we should all feel proud. He was brought through a likeable England team, something which many might have considered implausible not so long ago.

Have there been tactical mistakes and the like? Yes, at points. But the ‘under a microscope’ way in which Premier League football is scrutinised these days doesn’t work in the international game. Managers have a miniscule amount of time to drill a tactical system into their players, and they can’t just sign or loan in a replacement if somebody important gets injured. And while the players certainly can’t be accused of not caring, they’re also just plain bloody knackered at the end of a season that started with world tours before a competitive ball had even been kicked last summer and ended less than two weeks before they got underway in Germany.

And then there’s the record: a quarter-final and a semi-final in the World Cup, and two finals in the Euros. There are, arguably, three names at or near the top of England’s historical managerial canon. Terry Venables took them to the semi-finals in 1996, but that was his only tournament and they didn’t get to the final, whether on home soil or abroad. Bobby Robson did likewise in 1990 and that was in the World Cup, but he failed to get them to the Euros in 1984 and in 1988 they finished bottom of their group having lost all three matches.

If you consider that a manager can only be considered the greatest if they come with silverware, then Alf Ramsey is literally your only choice. But even that 1966 win was slightly fortunate, while they lost four years later in Mexico as a direct result of a bad substitution, were beaten out of sight by West Germany in 1972 and didn’t qualify at all in 1974. They did make the semi-finals of the 1968 European Championships, but for consistency Southgate is quite clearly the most successful England manager of all-time. It would make sense for him to continue in the position. Whether this happens or not will be up in the air, for now.

So pack away the bunting. Put the ares flares back in the cupboard. You won’t be needing those again in a couple of years. But enjoy the memories for what they were. Yes, yes, yes, I’m sure that delicate sensibilities were mortally offended by some of their performances. They were a difficult watch at times, we all know that.

And yes, the draw fell kindly for them, but quite why that’s such a major issue for so many people remains something of a mystery. Consistent success breeds consistent success. In club football, the winners get more TV money, and in international football nations are ranked and seeded, thus increasing their chances of getting a more comfortable draw, both in qualifying and in the finals. In the end, they almost got over the line, but were beaten by the best team in the tournament. And they made them work for it. Sometimes the narrative really is that simple.

On a train from Brighton to Worthing yesterday afternoon, a young lad went into the toilet as soon as it left Brighton station and didn’t re-emerge until we were at Southwick some 12 minutes later, sniffing profusely. And England’s performances this summer were if nothing else extremely appropriately… cokey. Short bursts of very confident highs, followed by a lengthier degree of comedown.

We happily shovelled Jude Bellingham’s 95th minute overhead kick, those five perfect penalty kicks and Ollie Watkins last minute semi-final winner—do non-regular watchers have any idea of how rare these are?—up our collective hooters, and this morning we all feel a little bit sorry for ourselves over having invested too much into something which ended in disappointment. England are nothing if not de nos jours.