England made us believe – we should be grateful for the moment of unity

Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more. This was it. History was about to be made and the “58 years of pain” would soon be a neuralgic memory. We were ready for battle, oh, yes! Pinkly undercooked barbecue sausages (Tesco expected to shift 800,000 packs of bangers over the weekend)? Check. Fortifying drinks (Asda expected to sell 2.4 million bottles of beer)? Check. Defibrillator in case it’s penalties again? Check.

In the surge of euphoria after we beat the Dutch and got through to the final, the country had cast off its cloak of protective cynicism and dared to hope. To dream the impossible dream. However, some wary habits of our doubting selves lingered on. I asked a friend if I could join him at our local football ground, where 900 people were sharing the experience together, and he snapped, “Don’t jinx it!” I should remain in the place where I’d watched the previous games. “I went to the pub in 1996 for the semis and Germany beat us,” Ian reported dolefully, “Should have stayed at home, because England won when I was at home.” It is by the observance of such primitive superstitions and pre-match rituals that an Englishman’s paranoia may be soothed if not altogether assuaged.

What started as a prickle of excitement on Saturday morning was full-blown butterflies by 6.30 on Sunday evening when my group of friends reported for duty in front of the television. I put myself on intravenous rosé for medicinal reasons, and I bet I wasn’t the only one. “A night that could change the history of sport in our country,” said Gary Lineker, setting the hyperbole bar so high Jordan Pickford couldn’t get a fist to it. Quite properly, our host had cast off his frightful Gary Lineker at Next leisurewear and wore a beautiful suit, shirt and tie for the big occasion. (Count yourself lucky he wasn’t sporting a pro-Palestine badge on an I HEART Keir T-shirt.) The Brits on the BBC panel, Rio Ferdinand and Micah Richards (suave Spaniard Juan Mata completed the trio), were confident that, this time, it was coming home.

“Harry Kane’s got 66 career goals and 1966 was the last time England won,” said Rio, explaining that this numerical coincidence was a good omen. What’s the Spanish for clutching at straws?

“We don’t believe in fairy tales, but we do believe in dreams,” Gareth Southgate said cryptically in a pre-match interview. According to the perpetually hangdog England manager, this was “the chance to make history” and then he added something which suddenly made you feel the desolating weight that decent, fretful man has had to carry: “The chance to make our country happy.”

No pressure, lads. The opening whistle hadn’t blown yet, but it was obvious we were nearly there already. In all the excitement, though, we had overlooked a minor matter: our opponents. Spain had nothing to offer except dazzling speed, an ability to superglue the ball to their feet, great passing, a wunderkind with pipe-cleaner limbs, the sinuous strength of a panther, and a remorseless ability to score goals.

“Buckle up, everyone!” cried Lineker and it was then the impossible dream had its first contact with reality. “Long spell of typically great passing play from Spain,” observed Alan Shearer in the commentary box with Guy Mowbray. Their voices were stippled with anxiety. “Oh, dear,” groaned my friend Kate, who was sitting next to me, “Nerve-shredding.”

It was. English moral fibre was put through the spiralizer. Our boys tried to hold firm against the Spanish attack, but they were sandbags keeping a terrible flood at bay; no sooner had one lot of water been cleared than another wave crashed over them.

“Well done, Declan!” encouraged Shearer. You just knew Alan would have got down on the pitch in a second if he could to help the 25-year-old midfielder with his lucky new haircut (like a boy, proud but scared, on his first day at big school). Close by, John Stones made a courageous, majestic tackle on the diabolically gifted Nico Williams. Stones was a rock.

So was Kyle Walker, who stood like Samson in the temple using his mighty girth to prop up the crumbling pillar of the English defence. Walker nearly crocked himself when he tumbled off the pitch and crashed into Spain’s coach, Luis de la Fuente, who has the owlish severity of a bank manager about to turn down a mortgage application.

“They’re doing their best,” yelped my friend Kate, trying to be kind.

“That’s what people’s mothers say,” snorted her husband, Nick, who was fed up with our team for “loose passing”.

“We are people’s mothers,” Kate and I retorted. It’s true, our boys are the same age as the lads on the field and we felt their misery keenly and the misery of all those whose fervent hopes were pinned on their young shoulders.

Bang on cue, my son texted me from the roiling cauldron of a London pub. “Mum, it’s cagey, scrappy like a Millwall game,” he wrote, “It’ll take a moment of magic from someone.” Then came the phrase I have heard my Chelsea fan yell a hundred times at the television: “Get Cole Palmer on!”

After 25 minutes on the Hope ’n’ Despair rollercoaster, we were white-knuckled and it was still too close to call. Captain Harry Kane, already on dodgy form, got a yellow card (“STOP ARGUING WITH THE REF, HARRY, PLEASE DON’T GET SENT OFF, FOR GOD’S SAKE!”). Luke Shaw played a brilliant ball, so did our muted star Jude Bellingham; but there was no one in front of goal to do anything with it. They were tied up marking Williams and the Panther. Then, the referee booked Dani Olmo (oh, that shameful surge of pleasure when one of the enemy gets a yellow card, especially if it’s undeserved!). Neither goalkeeper had been troubled so far, but Spain was much more threatening than England; every corner they got felt like a death sentence.

Two minutes to go until half-time and the heroic Walker yet again pursued the wunderkind, Lamine Yamal (his 17th birthday was on Saturday), down the left wing. “I’m nearly as old as your dad, but you’re not beating me in a race,” was Guy Mowbray’s perfect summing up of their duel.

The half-time review by the BBC panel strained to be upbeat: “We are holding our own.” “We are stifling the threat.” “Spain haven’t given England a breather,” complained Ferdinand, as if the Spaniards were expected to take a mercy timeout. The experts agreed we needed to “force Spain to play worse”. Good plan. But how?

We had barely settled back in our chairs with topped-up wine and beer when Spain got their first goal. “S---!” shrieked our group.

After that, England gave pass after pass away; all composure gone. “Just because they’re the better team doesn’t mean they have to win,” Nick reasoned desperately. Kate and I drained the bottle of Whispering Angel. And the nation cried out as one, “FFS, Gareth, get Cole Palmer on!” But Southgate, deaf to all entreaties, patrolled the perimeter of his bunker like a traffic warden with a migraine.

If the performance of the England team at Euro 2024 has a theme it would surely be this: a herd of thoroughbred colts tethered in a donkey sanctuary. Their muleish manager has certainly seemed reluctant to give them their head and only in brief, exhilarating bursts have we seen what they could do if a master tactician were to harness all that talent. But individual genius is not enough against a formidable fighting unit like Spain. The stress became unbearable: if only there’d been a sofa in England big enough for us all to hide behind! Amazingly, thanks to two inspired saves by Pickford, we were we not 3-0 down. “GET COLE PALMER ON!”

Finally, with 20 minutes left on the clock, Southgate did just that (having already substituted Kane, who should never have come back after half-time, for Ollie Watkins). There is a reason that the prodigiously gifted attacker is known as “Cold Palmer” at Chelsea. The Spaniards may have fire in their blood, but the 22-year old Henry V doppelganger has ice in his veins. He is a shark for scoring. After a great ball from Bellingham, Palmer duly did what comes naturally and fired the ball past the Spanish keeper.

It was worth all the agony just for that explosive moment of joy, and relief. My God, the relief. There is nothing like it. We leapt to our feet, punched the air and cheered, and millions in all the pubs and clubs and the sitting rooms leapt and cheered with us. “The chance to make our country happy,” Southgate had said wistfully, and in that moment no happiness was ever happier.

The respite was temporary, as the direction of play dictated it should be. Spain deserved her victory, no question, but how sad to see our brave lads felled, defeated, stricken. There is a great Emily Dickinson poem about how those who lie dying on the field of battle can tell you the definition of success better than the victors. “On whose forbidden ear/The distant strains of triumph burst agonised and clear.” Jude, John, Kyle, Declan, Bukayo, Jordan, Ollie, little Phil the Feet, Luke, Kieran, Kobbie, Marc, Ivan the Great, each of them felt the agony of the lost victory, so nearly theirs.

So the impossible dream ended in a nightmare? Far from it, I reckon. The television audience for the final of Euro 24 will have been millions greater than the combined number of people who voted for the Labour and Conservative parties at the general election (around 16 million). A staggering 40 per cent of those eligible to vote on July 4 refused to do so. Britons may be sick of politicians and the mess they have made of this land, but we still love our country and, given the opportunity, we are grateful to turn out and show it.

Patriotism, the love that dare not speak its name, quickens into vivid life in the form of a team whose diversity is not dictated by any human-resources diktat but by glorious merit alone. Who can look upon the England team and dare to call us racist?

The collective euphoria caused by Southgate and his lads is set to give the economy a £400 million boost. England’s patchy play may have been the subject of frustration and derision, but the hospitality industry said that the team’s prolonged stay in the tournament had “saved businesses”. On the back of what Ferdinand dubbed the “greatest stag do ever”, the British beer and pub association is expecting a “multimillion-pound bonanza”, with an extra eight million pints served for the Spain match alone.

The great player and manager Danny Blanchflower once said that football “possesses the power to make the week ahead sparkle with a sense of joyous wellbeing”. There will be no open-topped bus for them, but Southgate and his players delivered that sense of wellbeing in spades. There is no cause for shame or apology. On the contrary. This was not the rout it could have been: the lads fought and they did better against the best team in Europe than any other nation.

The delirium of anticipation succeeded by the thud of disappointment, this has been a familiar, painful pattern for our country. But it is not the whole story. Look at the wonderful way the English do the Morning After Not Quite Winning Something – “At least Starmer doesn’t get to claim the success!” – we are world-beaters at that.

Don’t get me wrong. England’s dull, fumbled earlier games must not be rewritten as some cunning evidence of secret strength. All I know is, we could do with more of the national sense of togetherness fostered over these past tumultuous weeks. We liked it a lot. It made the country happy; thank you for that, Gareth. And we will remember the team that played that dazzling first half against the Netherlands, like gods on day release, and pray that they will be back. Preferably, in 2026 for the World Cup. Our spots on the sofa are already reserved. England expects; our boys, our lionhearts.