Since England made it through to the Euros final last Wednesday, a series of official and fan-made football compilation videos began to be shared wildly on social media. They’re backbeated either by state-of-the-nation hip hop or optimistic-melancholic indie – The Streets’ “Turn the Page” or Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know”. And they feature a string of Gareth Southgate’s highs (and the lows that followed them), but also those of earlier England squads, prominently from the Nineties and late-Eighties. The BBC’s final coverage even began with a similar montage titled “Finally” and narrated with a script by England football laureate, James Graham. This is how we chronicle our national football team, and this Euros final defeat to Spain will soon feature.
National football events don’t become part of public history, they become part of collective memory – which is slightly different. When we close our eyes, we don’t see a linear narrative (partially because football never deigns to give us one). Instead, what appears is a supercut: in our case the very-nearlys, the emotional crack-ups. It’s testament to its power that I can convince myself of the vividness of Gazza’s tears and Maradona’s hand of God despite not being alive for either. And it is telling in the videos circulating pre-match that we recall the agonies as readily as the triumphs. There’s Lampard’s forgotten goal, there’s Beckham’s red card – there’s Gareth’s own penalty miss.
This match and the tournament in general have provided plenty of footage to supplement the canon. First, there were all the reasons to get excited: Bukayo Saka’s cut-inside curler, Trent Alexander-Arnold’s emphatic exorcism of the penalty demons, and Jude Bellingham’s magical somersault. Inevitably, they have now been followed by the cosmic comeuppance. Once again, we went behind, and once again, we drew level thanks to a moment of individual brilliance from Cole Palmer. But this time it wasn’t enough, and when Mikel Oyarzabal found a winner we failed to recover.
Perhaps too much is made of the English fetish for quiet defeat, a twee self-conceit. It’s a way of forgetting we’re equally capable of jingoistic bombast – think VE Day, think the relief of Mafeking. But it is true that we have curated a particular tradition of glorious failures: the Light Brigade, General Gordon, Scott of the Antarctic, Dunkirk, Eddie the Eagle, Tim Henman. These tragedies and losers appeal to a post-Victorian sense of martyrdom. They might, too, reflect our collective feeling of retreat and decline.
Gareth Southgate has the perfect deportment to join this list: honourable and unlucky. Because, at this point, the quest for an English tournament victory is starting to look like the search for the Northwest Passage. In tournament history, 1966 stands alone, a black-and-white triumph free from the discolouration of defeat. Otherwise, we are left to memorialise our defeats as victories. This group of players and Gareth Southgate in particular deserve our gratitude – they brought us closer to the cusp than we had come for decades. But, as we pick over this latest disappointment, the only real question is: if not now, then when?
[See also: Will England love the real Jude Bellingham?]
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