Harry Kane of England celebrates after scoring their side's second goal during the UEFA Euro 2020 Championship Semi-final match between England and Denmark at Wembley Stadium on July 07, 2021
(Picture: Getty Images)England finally, actually, wonderfully winning a semi-final at a major tournament — just doesn’t happen. Or rather, it has only ever happened once before, but when it did, The Kinks had just been knocked off the top of the charts and Harold Wilson was in Downing Street.
That was in 1966, a lifetime ago, and it means a hefty proportion of the English population simply does not know how to react to, you know, being really good. For me, as not only a long-suffering England fan but also a season-ticket holder at a non-league club for whom success is a foreign concept, failure (glorious or otherwise) is an intrinsic part of the football-watching experience.
When my club team loses, it hurts, but the pain soon dissipates. No-one else particularly cares that we’ve been beaten 1-0 by Braintree, so the grieving process is swift and private. But when England lose — and boy, have we lost some humdingers — it’s an inescapable tragedy. For as long as I’ve been alive and for a few decades before, supporting England has been to ask, repeatedly: what if?
What if Rooney hadn’t been sent off in that game against Portugal in 2006? What if Frank Lampard’s goal had counted against Germany four years later? And let’s not even start on the humongous “what if” of England in the Nineties. We’re so used to watching England slumped on the ground, beaten again, and consoling ourselves with the conclusion that even though we thought this year might finally have been the one, we were never actually going to win it, were we?
Yesterday, though, it wasn’t us but Denmark who stood desolate on the Wembley pitch. And let’s be honest, the way in which we beat them — an own goal and a slightly questionable penalty — feels like an extremely England-ish way to get knocked out of a tournament.
But instead, all we had to do was revel at Harry Kane’s big, beautiful, smiling face and wonder where exactly in Brent they’re going to put the Raheem Sterling statue. Even now, after a sobering night’s sleep, I still don’t quite know how to feel. Elated? Nervous? Confused? Emboldened? Terrified? All of those things at once? Who knows, quite frankly. This is uncharted territory. But maybe, just maybe, this is the year that we stop asking: what if?
Is it coming home? Let us know in the comments below.
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