They have been pilloried, questioned and insulted, but it’s England in the final | Euro 2024
Put out more flags. Dig out the George Cross jester’s hat. Prepare to throw what remains of your plastic beer glass in the air. England’s footballers will now contest the final of Euro 2024 in Berlin this Sunday after yet another thrilling moment of late drama in Dortmund.
The Aston Villa striker Ollie Watkins was the late hero, playing at his first tournament, and a late sub for Harry Kane with the game poised at 1-1. England and the Netherlands were already staring balefully at the prospect of extra time when Watkins took a pass from Cole Palmer, another Southgate substitute, turned swiftly, didn’t look up, and simply hammered the ball low into the far corner.
The BVB Stadion is another of the Rhineland’s huge lankly industrial metal football hangars. In that moment the ground just exploded, a huge wave of noise barrelling down from England end, the England bench emptying on to the pitch and leaping and frolicking.
England, who have been pilloried, questioned and insulted by influential broadcasters, will now play in their second straight final in this tournament. And they did it not just by winning late, but by playing well too, producing their best performance of the summer so far.
From the start the whole occasion felt big, epic, retro, and always somehow slightly out of control on the emotional scale. Dortmund was thronging all afternoon with orange shirts, crackling with broken glass under foot, its winding shopping streets haunted by England songs, England wails and drones and chants. Don’t Take Me Home. Phil Foden’s On Fire, and recent addition to the canon Stop the Boats Nigel Farage, heard here echoing around Dusseldorf Hauptbahnhof.
For a while even the rain was massive and relentless, drenching the deep green turf, creeping in through the holes in the corrugated roof, cooling the clammy air.
The Dutch fans had turned Dortmund’s vast yellow wall into a roiling orange mass. England had the other end and most of the in-between, tiers decked out with the usual pageantry of flags, a familiar tour of the country from Bristol to Carlisle to Bermondsey.
The talk at this tournament, even as England progressed to this late stage, had been about gaps. Gaps in the team. Gaps between the manager, fans, media. But there was a window of light in this game. For half an hour in the first half, England’s young midfielders played like princelings.
England fielded their comfortable armchair formation again, the Southgate security truss, three at the back, with the hugely composed Marc Guéhi returning after suspension. They look happier with that extra defensive body, the box of white shirts tighter. Southgate-ism is control and security, the footballing equivalent of a pensive and reassuring frown.
England played well for seven minutes. And then suddenly the Dutch scored from a quick turnover. The noise came in an extraordinary slingshot from that end, vast rolling waves of noise as the Dutch players ran to the ziggurat of orange.
No matter. England were, of all things, playing quite well. They looked perky, fresh, unafraid. They had, of all things, a series of coherent attacks, fluent movements, runs into difficult spaces, passing angles, shots at goal. They were awarded a penalty with 16 minutes gone, made by Bukayo Saka’s intricate, slaloming run, and a reckless challenge from Denzel Dumfries, almost kicking Kane’s airborne foot clean off his ankle as he went to shoot. Kane buried the kick. 1-1. This place was absolutely throbbing, noise moving across the pitch in swirls, the players gripped with it.
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The Dutch manager Ronald Koeman sank into his chair, flaring his jowls, then did something that changed the game. The injured Memphis Depay, an attacker, was replaced by a midfielder, Joey Veerman, reinforcing the Dutch exactly where England were creating the overloads. The tension shifted. The Netherlands braced and held on to the 1-1 scoreline to half-time. This is what Southgate often fails to do, the hand of the manager reaching on to the pitch, tugging at the parts, fixing, tightening, altering the flow.
Beyond the vast yellow spaceship doors clamped on to the roof of the main stand, the sky across the city had turned a lovely Martian red. And for a while Foden, Kobbie Mainoo and Saka had the ball on a string, just zipping about, making things up. This is what this thing is supposed to look like. At one point Mainoo found Foden with drag-back flick, a prompt for a curling shot that almost crept into the corner. They can play, these boys. It was the nicest, sunniest most liberated half an hour of their time so far in Germany.
Half-time just seemed to draw the life out of the game. Southgate will be blamed, because Southgate must be blamed. But the Netherlands set themselves defensively to match England, a kind of mass orange-shirted embrace. England became more cautious in their movements, stayed in their lanes. The game became an exercise in feints and misdirection, not so much a game of chess as a really cautious and quite soporific game of chess.
Southgate appeared on his touchline in an attitude of concern. The waistcoat is long gone now, glimpsed only in the retro cardboard cutouts brandished by England’s supporters in bars around the town, like a stag do memento. At these Euros, Southgate has gone charity pro-am golf weekend chic, the lattice-weave cream polo shirt and skinny black slacks. He stood and frowned. Passivity has been a strength, a virtue, an active and deliberate method with England. They keep winning, slowly. Is it the only way to do this? Apparently so. England will always take it deep, but they roll on now to Berlin.
