It’s the second half of extra time, and about 107 minutes have been played, or maybe a couple, or maybe four months, it’s hard to tell. Eberechi Eze, who is now England’s left wing-back, dribbles out of his penalty area under pressure and pumps a long, hopeful, hopeless ball up the left flank.
Harry Kane, who is nothing if not eager to earn his 26th touch of the night, duly chases it. The angle is against him and there are no team-mates remotely nearby, and Manuel Akanji is breathing all over his shoulder blades, but Kane manages to keep the ball in. And keeps going. Over the touchline, off his feet, and straight into the England dugout, where he is wrapped up by Gareth Southgate.
And for Southgate, taking charge of his 100th match for England, this feels like a quietly emblematic moment. Perhaps the fundamental theme of his eight-year reign has been the search for control. Control of the environment, control of the ball, control of midfield, control of the message. The mastery of small details.
But of course, time has loosened the reins from his grip a little. The dreaded Noise has begun to leak in through the windows. Now Team England is basically nothing but Noise, a rolling maelstrom of steam and fume and inertia and podcast rage and Jude Bellingham’s imaginary balls. In a way, this is the logical end point. Bukayo Saka is at right-back, England appear to be playing an asymmetric 5-1-1-2-1, and Southgate’s captain is quite literally coddled in his lap.
You can take your plans and schemes. You can take your non-negotiable principles of selection, all the data, all the video, all the years spent trundling down the M62 going to watch players who were never going to make it. Maybe, ultimately, it was all for nothing. Because England are in the semi-finals of Euro 2024 and literally no part of it makes the slightest sense.
Typical: you finally nail your audition for the Manchester United job, and they’ve already given Erik ten Hag a new contract. Here again, another streaky late show high on flaws and high on drama, by a team fatally disconnected from its public, fatally disconnected from itself. It was probably England’s best performance of the tournament, and yet you would still struggle to call it progress.
This delicate machine, painstakingly built over eight years, has completely disintegrated. It probably won’t be Southgate’s team after next week, and in a way it’s barely his team now: just a pile of fragments and vibes. And – plot twist – the fragments and vibes are brilliant.
The game in summary: England were bad for about 90 minutes, good for about 30 minutes in eight separate spells, Saka slammed in a moonshot from the edge of the area, Jordan Pickford saved a penalty, and Southgate has now reached as many tournament semi-finals as all his predecessors combined. Don’t try to spot a pattern in any of this. There isn’t one. The origin truth of football is that outstanding individuals doing outrageous things is no basis for a team. The origin truth of international tournaments is that, every once in a while, it doesn’t matter.
You could glimpse this in the new hybrid formation. Four at the back in defence. Three at the back going forward. But occasionally nine at the back when England inexplicably decide to drop the pace and let Switzerland attack them. Kieran Trippier being rewarded for his deadly attacking threat on the left by being promoted even further up the left.
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And of course this doesn’t last, and so after a long spell of pressure, the high press grabbing England like a claw, Switzerland score. Murat Yakin, a coach who still has an actual plan, pushes Dan Ndoye further forward, and it is his cross, bundled in by Breel Embolo, that brings England to the brink again. The first 75 minutes of this game have gone by in a kind of numb blur.
So, Gareth. About that handbrake. Credit to Southgate, he doesn’t think twice. He doesn’t give it five minutes. He doesn’t tweak it. He rips it up. On comes Cole Palmer. On comes Eze. On comes Luke Shaw. England finally have a threat down the left, and because football is a fluid game of subtle shifts and butterfly effects, the breakthrough comes on the right. Declan Rice with the decoy dart into the right channel. Saka, finally granted a stretched defence and a little space, claims his flowers.
Saka here. Bellingham against Slovakia. The inevitable penalty shootout. Perhaps the reason England have so reliably come alive in these last-chance moments is that this is a team that have basically crumbled, playing off their primal instincts, a team that need to feel the cold chill of death on their buttocks, the warning red dot of tomorrow’s push notifications, in order to lever itself into action. It doesn’t last, because you would need some sort of strategy for that. But these are gifted footballers and, occasionally, gifted footballers will do gifted things.
Things fall apart. Centres cease to hold. Eight years of careful modulation, and all of a sudden the stately order of Peak Gareth has gone, and it’s not coming back. Three days of training isn’t going to fix that. Adam Wharton isn’t going to fix that. Chaos brought England to this point. Only chaos is going to get them through what comes next.