Football Isn’t Coming Home After All

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/12/opinion/england-world-cup-coming-home.html

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So the dream is over. Football is not coming home, after all. The England team, having united a nation, bowed out to little Croatia, beaten by a superior side in the World Cup semifinal.

“Gutted” was how the England captain, Harry Kane, summed up the feeling in the squad. A goal up within five minutes through Kieran Trippier’s superb dipping free-kick, England seemed tantalizingly close to Sunday’s final against France.

The truth, however, is that this was an average English team, lifted by a superb defense, terrific team spirit, a coach of inspiring sobriety and the heroic goalkeeping of Jordan Pickford. It did not have a midfield to speak of.

When Kane switched off up front, as he did for much of the match against Croatia, England’s offensive threat became minimal and the old instinct to heave meaningless long balls upfield returned.

You can’t go to a World Cup final without a midfield. You’re lucky, helped by a favorable draw, to reach a semifinal. That was the hard truth Croatia delivered.

Croatia had, in Luka Modric of Real Madrid and Ivan Rakitic of Barcelona, the tormentors of England. They held the ball, they probed, they taunted, they created — and in the end they overwhelmed an English side that just ran out of ideas.

Dele Alli and Jesse Lingard, talented English players but neither of them quite ready for prime time, faded. Not precisely midfielders, more gifted opportunists who lurk just behind the front line, they could not begin to marshal and direct the team, as Modric and Rakitic did. Nor could Jordan Henderson, the Liverpool central midfielder who can keep a side ticking over but not provide inspiration.

It was telling that of the 12 goals England scored in the World Cup (six of them against hapless Panama), nine came from set pieces. In other words, England, despite the thrashing of Panama, scored just three goals from open play in six matches in Russia. That’s paltry. There was nobody to create those goals — no Bobby Charlton, as in the glorious 1966 World Cup victory in England.

That, of course, is the only time England has won soccer’s most prized trophy. I remember watching as a 10-year-old boy and sobbing as Geoff Hurst’s fourth goal crashed into the net with Kenneth Wolstenholme, the BBC commentator, saying: “Some people are on the pitch. They think it’s all over — IT IS NOW!” To those immortal words, England concluded its 4-2 victory over West Germany.

This brave young team raised the hopes of 1966 with its spirit and cohesion. More than 26 million viewers in England watched the semifinal on ITV. The national dejection at the defeat is overwhelming.

The “Three Lions,” depicted on the crest of the England shirt, and their coach, Gareth Southgate, return home with justified pride. In Trippier, the goal-scoring wing back who has been a discovery of the tournament, and the central defenders — Kyle Walker, John Stones and Harry Maguire — England now have a solid foundation for the future.

By beating Colombia in a penalty shootout in the first knockout round, England laid to rest the demons of defeat in penalty shootouts in 1990 against West Germany (semifinal), 1998 against Argentina (last 16) and 2006 against Portugal (quarterfinal). That’s important psychologically. In the end, winning is about character. There’s no greater test of it than those unforgiving shootouts.

To beat Colombia that way was particularly important for Southgate, whose missed penalty in the Euro 96 semifinal against Germany condemned England to defeat. The miss has haunted the coach ever since — to the point, he confessed in Russia, that he could not listen to the “Three Lions” song, with its refrain of “Football’s coming home,” for two decades.

That anthem has been echoing around England again. The English are long-suffering when it comes to soccer, and so patient. My nephew, Jamie Walden, commented: “Football’s still coming home. Just going to take a bit longer than expected.”

All that’s needed now is a match-winning English midfielder of composure and vision, the difference between good average and glory. Such players — a Paul Pogba of France, a Modric — do not grow on trees. They are the providers of magic.

I confess that I do find one solace in this defeat. If England had won the World Cup, the jingoism from The Daily Mail and all the “Brexit” cohorts would have been intolerable. We’d all have had to listen to how the glory and character of England had been restored by Britain exiting the European Union.

So I salute Croatia and its midfield geniuses for more reasons than one.

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