You almost feel sorry for Spain. They’ve played the best football. They’ve scored the prettiest goals. They’ve beaten all the top teams. But they don’t have the Ring.
It is, of course, possible that Gareth Southgate has not secretly forged a magical ring of power from a lump of accursed gold. But his team’s progress to the final of the Euros makes more sense if you assume he has. How else can you make this many mistakes and get away with it?
Southgate has been the England manager for eight years – enough time, you would think, to have figured out a clear idea of who was going to be in the team and how it was going to play. Yet he began the tournament with a back four that had never started together before, a midfield three that had never started together before, and a team structure that failed in four consecutive matches before he accepted it was time to try a different approach.
That would normally be enough to get you knocked out. The England fans were so disgusted that when Southgate approached them after the Slovenia game they hurled beer at him. In the next match against Slovakia England were 30 seconds from elimination. It was only 13 days ago yet it already feels like a shadow memory from a previous life.
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You shudder to think of the ridicule that would have been heaped upon Southgate if the Slovaks had managed to head away that late long throw, instead of letting Marc Guehi flick it on towards Jude Bellingham. Now Southgate stands on the brink of history, the unwitting architect of a miracle machine.
His team have played more than 600 minutes of football in this tournament and have looked genuinely impressive for maybe 30 of those in a row. That was in the first half against the Netherlands, when Phil Foden, Bukayo Saka and Kobbie Mainoo took control and showed what England can look like in full flow – at least until Ronald Koeman went man-for-man in midfield and shut them down.
The rest of the time they have mainly ranged between dull and bad, in contrast to Spain, who always look clever, lively and inventive. They have been blessed with yet another kind draw. Southgate pointed out that England had a good draw because they won their group, which is fair, but they still got lucky with how things worked out. Spain also won their group and their reward was to be pitted against Germany and then France.
The bottom line is that whenever England have faced a moment of real crisis somebody has stepped up with a flash of brilliance to rescue them. England have more individuals capable of these match-winning moments than anyone else, even Spain.
Southgate’s biggest achievement is to have presided over this collection of extremely talented players for many years without any significant outbreaks of conflict and chaos. That might sound like the bare minimum you would expect, but actually it proved beyond many of his predecessors. Glenn Hoddle humiliated David Beckham at the 1998 World Cup. Sven-Goran Eriksson’s squads were divided by club cliques. The players all hated Fabio Capello. Southgate, who came into the job a much less distinguished coach than any of these, has done much better than any of them.
If he has retained the players’ trust it’s partly because he has shown he trusts them. For example, with an obviously sub-par Harry Kane delivering a string of sluggish performances many commentators have been arguing that England would surely be stronger with a dynamic front-runner like Ollie Watkins or Ivan Toney.
Someone like Alex Ferguson might drop Kane for the final. For Southgate it would be unthinkable. To do so would be a betrayal not only of Kane but of his whole approach to human affairs. Loyalty is a first principle with him. Remember that Harry Maguire and even Jordan Henderson would probably have been starting for England in this tournament if not for injuries.
Throughout the last few weeks the general feeling among those who follow England closely is that Southgate would leave the job after the Euros. They say that by comparison to a few years ago he seems a little frayed, a little less patient, less likely to rise above criticism and more willing to passive-aggressively snip back at questions deemed unfair or provocative.
During this tournament he has complained about the personal criticism he received, and has repeatedly talked about the importance of celebrating the moments of happiness when they come, suggesting that most of the time he is not having much fun. The general impression has long been that he is fed up with the job and its aggravations and is ready to let somebody else take it from here.
In the last couple of days things have changed. The imminent prospect of winning England’s first title for 58 years has proved energising. The FA are letting it be known that they would like him to stay, and if they win on Sunday he now surely will.
The core of the team – Rice, Bellingham, Foden, Saka, Mainoo – is young and should be even stronger by the time of the next World Cup. Harry Kane, John Stones and Jordan Pickford will all be 32. And English academies keep churning out ever-more-accomplished young talent.
Winning the Euros would mean nobody could call Southgate a loser any more – unless, perhaps, he were to abdicate as a European champion, walking away from the chance to win the World Cup and secure his status as one of the greatest figures in the history of English football.
First they need to beat Spain. Football logic suggests Spain are the better team, but the laws of narrative point to an English victory, right down to the fact that they have got to the final beating a string of teams beginning with S – Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Switzerland. Still, to paraphrase Sean Connery as Indiana Jones’ Dad: “But in the Schpanish language, España begins with an E…”
