We've come so far and we've reached so high

Claire’s cat can rest easy. For now, it’s not coming home, and Gareth Southgate’s race is run. It was quite a ride though, wasn’t it?

Much of the debate last Sunday was whether Shaw would start ahead of Trippier at left back. It felt a bit like throwing him in the deep end, giving him his first start in the final, marking the tournament’s wunderkind, but he was excellent and had Yamal pretty much in his pocket for the first half. It was asking a lot to expect him to bomb up and down the left flank on his first start since February, mind. Spain caused more problems down their left wing, with Williams looking dangerous right from kick off – something that we should have taken as an early warning. It was terribly confusing, Spain having a player called Nico Williams, by the way. Must have really rubbed salt in the wounds of Welsh viewers.

The first half was as cagey as you’d expect. England were never going to come out all guns blazing, but fucking hell, how frustrating was it when, 16 minutes in, they got a corner, chose to play it short (do I not like short corners), and, when the ball was cleared, it got played backwards to Pickford?

It wasn’t like we just sat back, though. Saka was once again our main threat and Spain were pushed into double marking him, something we probably should have taken more advantage of. Foden had a great shot saved following a free kick, and the end of the half, Kane had a shot from the edge of the box that Rodri had to stretch to block, pulling his hamstring in the process. It could so easily have been the moment that turned the tide in England’s favour. And yet, alas….

“Rodri’s off! Come on! Oh. Bugger.” Any hope that Spain would be weakened by losing one of their best players to injury at half time was immediately extinguished. Yamal got past Shaw for the first time all night, and it almost felt unfair how swiftly we were punished. The precocious little brat crossed to the 22-year-old veteran Williams, who had caused us problems all game and was given far too much space. But we only start playing once we concede, right? That was the kick up the arse we needed, right?

Not quite. We nearly conceded again 2 minutes later when we gave the ball away with a sloppy back pass. On 55 minutes, Bellingham did good defensive work to win the ball back and play it out, only for Rice to give the ball away, and Williams nearly got a second. What the fuck was in the half time drinks?

There was no pissing about waiting until the last 10 minutes to make changes, and Southgate made the right call bringing Watkins on for Kane an hour in. Bringing off your leading scorer and captain with half an hour of a final left is a brave move, but maybe dropping a player who clearly wasn’t fit and starting a striker who scored with practically his first touch of the tournament would have been even braver.

It was the right substitution to make, though, and Watkins was far better at getting behind the defence. Pickford was keeping us in the game at this point, and had to make a couple of excellent saves. Time for another tactical masterstroke, with Palmer coming on for Mainoo 70 minutes in. Could him and Watkins be the heroes again? It looked like the dream comeback was on 3 minutes later, when Saka (who else?) broke down the left, passed to Bellingham who laid it off beautifully to Palmer, who, naturally, fucking buried it.

It was as scrappy and nervy in the last quarter of an hour as you’d expect a finely poised Euros final to be. Foden was increasingly having to track back, and Pickford was increasingly launching the ball long. There is only one man I hold responsible for what now feels like England’s sadly inevitable downfall, though. J’accuse Gary Neville.

The property magnate and part-time football pundit had criticised Marc Cucurella in the group stage, saying “He’s not been convincing at Chelsea…The Spanish defence, it’s got a lot of experience now but there’s something just missing from Spain that makes you feel like they’re not going to go all the way. I have to say that him being at left-back is a good example of why we think that.”

So of course, it was Cucurella who crossed the ball for Oyarzabal to score the winner in the 86th minute. Of course it was. And of course he gloated about it on Instagram after the game. Thanks for that Gary you prick. Oh and Rob Jones was a far better right back than you.

Bringing on Toney stupidly late in the game worked against Slovakia, so it was worth trying it again. We came agonisingly closer to an equaliser with some head tennis from a corner, but it just wouldn’t cross the line.

The better team won, but my God that didn’t make it any easier to take. And that’s the second time in less than a year that Spain beaten us in a major final. Thank fuck that Team GB aren’t sending either a men’s or women’s team to the Olympics, or they’d probably beat us in the final of that as well.

Could things have been done differently? Could we have brought it home? Kane obviously wasn’t fit, and maybe keeping faith with him and starting him every game was a mistake. And as great a player as he’s been for England, Sunday wasn’t the first final he’s underperformed in. That shot he had just before half-time, that Rodri got injured blocking? That was the only touch Kane had in the box in both the 2021 final and the 2024 final.

Kane wasn’t the only superstar who didn’t live up to our (perhaps unreasonable) expectations. Bellingham showed flashes of the brilliance we’ve seen from him all season – the spectacular overhead kick v Slovakia, nutmegging Rodri and later setting up Palmer for the equaliser in the final – but overall, he was strangely muted. With hindsight, expecting a 22-year-old to win us the Euros single-handedly was asking a bit much. I really thought he might, but it’s been a long season. Apparently, Bellingham’s played 5 times as many games as David Beckham had at his age. We should probably give him a break. He WILL win England a major trophy, but it just wasn’t his time.

We were all justifiably critical of how negative Southgate was throughout the tournament, and the final was often as frustrating to watch as the previous games had been, but this wasn’t the same as sitting back after taking the lead against an overachieving Italy team in 2021. Spain were the best, most creative, most attacking team at this Euros. They had an extra day to prepare for the final, and we’d gone to extra time twice. We defended brilliantly in the first half, but we couldn’t just defend and hope to hit Spain on the break for 90 minutes. If we’d pressed higher up the pitch and tried to put Spain on the back foot, Yamal and Williams probably would have punished us for it.

Maybe another manager could have got more out of this group of players, but there is no question that Gareth Southgate leaves the England men’s team far better than he found it. It really wasn’t very long ago that we were looking back wistfully at the glory days under Sven-Goran Eriksson, when we consistently made the quarter-finals. We’ve gone from “oh God not penalties again” to winning 3 shoot outs out of 4 under Southgate. History will be a lot kinder to him than we all have. Go well, Mr. Gareth. Thanks for everything.

It’s been a pretty quiet week at Boundary Park, mild disappointment in the training exercise at Warrington Rylands aside. Rylands’ local Northern Premier League rivals, my hometown team Prescot Cables, have clearly picked up the batshit baton from Latics. Their management team left on Monday, which sparked a mass exodus of players, a new management team was appointed on Wednesday, the chairman resigned yesterday morning, the vice-chairman was confirmed as the new chairman yesterday afternoon, then the manager who resigned on Monday was re-appointed at 6.30pm last night. Football will never let me know peace.

No time for feel sorry for ourselves. The Lionesses qualified for next summer’s Euros last Tuesday with a cagey 0-0 win v Sweden that Gareth Southgate would have been proud of, and we go to Switzerland as defending champions. And we kick off our promotion push at home to Braintree three weeks today! Football’s not so bad, is it. Might see you in the Rocky later. KTMFF.

Written by Arlene Finnigan