LIONHEARTS
England LOSE Euro 2024 final as they suffer heartache again after Spain score agonising late goal to win 2-1
Scroll down to see Spain's winning goal
KEEP on living dangerously and eventually you are going to slip and break your necks.
Gareth Southgate’s men had strolled along a tightrope throughout this entire tournament, falling behind in all four of their knock-out ties.
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And despite supersub Cole Palmer threatening to rescue them with an equaliser, Mikel Oyarzabal netted the 86th-minute winner for Spain’s deserving champions.
England had been poor throughout most of this Euros and they were thoroughly outplayed for the vast majority of the final.
There may have been late heartbreak but this was not a case of glorious failure.
Spain were a far superior football team for the past four weeks, England were a team living on moments.
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And that is how the final panned out, Spain passed and moved England to smithereens, while England enjoyed just one moment from Palmer.
Football is not coming home as the Three Lions became the first team to ever lose back-to-back Euros final - and Southgate will surely now be heading off now.
He has raised England significantly over these past eight years but after two finals, a semi and a quarter-final, he will go down in history as a nearly man.
A nearly man who succeeded a whole bunch of nowhere-near men - but a nearly man all the same.
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If there had been English optimism before kick-off then it was due to the wondrous weirdness of this road movie to Berlin.
The way Southgate’s team seemed to have cast off so many age-old English failings - an injury-time equaliser, five perfect shoot-out spot-kicks and a last-minute semi-final winner.
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Those sorts of things didn’t happen to us until Southgate came along.
Fatalism had been replaced by a sense of destiny - however much more impressive the Spanish had been in getting here.
The English had travelled in their tens of thousands, wide-eyed and thirsty, the QR codes on their phones like golden tickets to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.
A first major final on foreign soil, and for those who could remember the 1990s, the sweetness of a major final in the German capital of all places.
It was nothing like that wretched night at Wembley three years ago, when Luke Shaw, the only Englishman to score in a major international final in the past half-century, was back for his first start since February 18 at Luton.
This atmospheric arena, where Jesse Owens defied Adolf Hitler, was a long way from Kenilworth Road.
The English were in fine voice but Spain started with a matador’s strut, looking every inch a team who had arrived on the back of six straight wins, none of them on penalties.
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This felt like our time... but keep Gareth's culture and we can win it in 2026 instead, writes Jack Wilshere
IT will take a while for me and every England fan to get over this, writes Jack Wilshere.
To come so close to winning that trophy, only to be beaten in a second Euros final in a row, is a huge disappointment.
Especially when it really felt like this was our time.
It seemed that everything was coming together for us to end the long wait for a major title.
But Spain deserved it. They were the better team in the final and the best team of the tournament.
We will all — supporters, players, coaches, the FA — have to move on and go again.
Because English football is still in a good position.
Gareth Southgate has taken us to two finals, a semi-final and a quarter-final in four tournaments. We have never produced a run like that before.
The challenge now is to maintain this level of competitiveness and make England even better.
Southgate and his staff have done a fantastic job in changing the whole environment and narrative around the national team.
Whether Gareth carries on or not, the wider culture he has put in place must be preserved.
This tournament was the biggest test of that culture the team had to go through.
They overcame the problems and went all the way, only to fall at the final hurdle.
But there is every reason to believe we can challenge at the World Cup in 2026 and beyond.
We’ve got a really good group of players, many of them young, who can go on playing and performing for England for years.
Jude Bellingham, Kobbie Mainoo, Bukayo Saka, Phil Foden and Cole Palmer — to name just five — have plenty more tournaments in them.
This tournament will also be an inspiration for the next generations of players. Unfortunately there isn’t the trophy lift to take that to a completely different level.
But England have delivered moments in Germany that will be replayed forever.
The Bellingham overhead kick and Ollie Watkins’ semi-final winner will be recreated in playgrounds and cages up and down the country.
What I would like to see now is England continuing to develop, to become a team that can consistently dominate opponents and can give a real identity to English football.
We now have players who are comfortable on the ball and technically very good.
The biggest disappointment of the tournament was that we didn’t see that as often as we would have liked. That leaves us with a ‘what if?’ feeling.
England must not lose that old-school mentality of finding a way to win even when you’re not playing well — that never-say-die spirit which got us through this Euros more than once.
But the next step is to allow other qualities to shine through, to give the players that our system is creating the platform to show everything they can do.
The job for me and for other coaches is to keep producing players that are comfortable on the ball and understand how to perform under pressure at a high level.
English football is in a good place but we need to keep going. Then we will finally get over the line.
Real all of SunSport columnist Jack Wilshere's Euro 2024 columns...
Nico Williams was a menace on the left and John Stones needed to execute a tackle perfectly on the edge of the six-yard box to deny the winger a clear sight of goal.
Southgate scrapped the back three which had served him so well and reverted to a 4-2-3-1, with Jude Bellingham shoved out on the left like a spare part.
It was scruffy, scrappy, nervy stuff, with only Shaw looking assured, and Kane - who hasn’t looked match-fit all tournament, was booked for a mistimed lunge at Fabian Ruiz.
Declan Rice was having a shocker, Stones was playing hospital back-passes, Foden - the supposed firestarter - was non-existent and Kane was lumbering.
Finally, as the half drew to a close, England woke up.
Bellingham burgled the ball, Kane had a shot blocked by Rodri, Walker surged forward and won a free-kick, which Shaw delivered to Foden at the back post, forcing Unai Simon into the first save of the match.
Rodri had injured himself denying Kane and was withdrawn at half-time but any joy from that apparent good news was very short-lived.
It had been well signposted that Spain’s chief threat came from their wingers - but England didn’t read the danger.
And 69 seconds into the second half, they were behind for the fourth match in succession.
Lamine Yamal, who’d only turned 17 only the eve of the final, darted inside from the right, stretching England, and slipping a diagonal pass to Williams who side-footed first time past Jordan Pickford.
In previous matches, England had responded sharply to conceding first - here they threatened to disintegrate.
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Dani Olmo soon screwed a shot wide, Stones cleared off the line from Alvaro Morata and Williams drilled one narrowly wide.
England could barely put a foot right and there was no surprise when the labouring Kane was withdrawn in favour of semi-final hero Watkins.
There was a sudden lift for England, Bellingham spun on his heel, leaving two Spaniards on the floor, but fired wide.
Spain passed and moved, England panicked and scrambled and Pickford pushed a Yamal effort round the post.
But then Southgate sent on Palmer for Mainoo and within two minutes England were level.
Maybe Kane really is cursed as trophy drought goes on... he may never get a better chance with England
IT now seems as though he really is cursed. Along with the rest of us, writes Charlie Wyett.
Tragically, unbelievably, Harry Kane’s agonising search for a trophy still continues and you know have to wonder whether he will ever actually manage it.
Certainly for England, in any case.
Kane has now suffered defeat in three major club finals and two finals of the European Championships.
Last night, the Three Lions captain was so ineffective that he was replaced by Ollie Watkins just after the hour.
Like much of this tournament, he really struggled to make the impact when England needed him, not that he had much service.
He had one shot in the first half and that was Rodri, who subsequently injured himself and went off at the break.
When Cole Palmer struck that brilliant equaliser, Kane was off on his feet from the bench, only for the national team to get another kick in the bo**ocks at the end.
Kane was substituted in both the games against Switzerland and Holland which England went on to win but on this occasion, he could only witness a gut-wrenching twist just when it looked as though Gareth Southgate’s team had dug their way out of trouble.
The Bayern Munich striker suffered the World Cup 2018 semi-final loss against Croatia, endured heartbreak against Italy in the Euro2020 final and then missed from the spot in the World Cup 2022 quarter-final against France.
He really thought that this was his time, even though England did not play well in Germany.
Kane will know that he will have more opportunities with England. But not many more.
The World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico seems a long way away and it will surely be under a new manager. Will England be better than they are now? Probably not.
And we are all left to wonder how much better England would have been with a fit and firing Kane at his very best.
Read all of Charlie Wyett's Euro 2024 stories...
The Chelsea man fed Saka, who burst down the left and located Bellingham for a sweet lay-off, which Palmer buried left-footed, low and thunderous.
Spain continued to probe and Yamal forced Pickford into a sprawling stop before the winner arrived.
It was a passing move which had England shadow-chasing, ending with Marc Cucurella beating Walker to the ball and centring low for Oyarzabal to get in front of Guehi and poke past a wrong-footed Pickford.
From a Palmer corner, Rice had a header saved and Marc Guehi’s followed up was cleared off the line by Dani Olmo.
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But England’s underdog spirit finally wore off.
It will be 60 years of hurt by the time the World Cup comes round and it ain’t getting any less painful.
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