A New Hope for England
How would you expect a young England team with no experience at this level to come back from the most painful punch they will ever take? Would you even hope to see them drag themselves up off the canvas and do anything quite like this? Here in Moscow, almost at midnight, Gareth Southgate’s World Cup novices reacted to unprecedented disaster with unprecedented nerve, bravery, and barely precedented success. Because the fact that England are in the World Cup quarter-finals, facing Sweden in Samara on Saturday, is not even the half of it. Never mind that this will be their most winnable quarter-final since Cameroon at Italia ‘90. Forget any questions about whether they would rather face Croatia or Russia in the Moscow semi-final next Wednesday. All that must wait, at least for a day or two. It will take some time to get over this. Not just because England won on penalties, a draining 4-3 come-from-behind shoot-out that was its own drama, with its own arc of what felt like an imminent f...