There will be regrets but it has
The glorious, beer-soaked Russian summer that changed English football and the England team forever is at an end, and the old story of 1966 will remain, for four more years at least, the greatest ever told, although it took one hell of a World Cup semi-final to keep it that way.
England are out of Russia 2018, beaten in extra-time by Mario Mandzukic’s goal, but not in that feeble, unreliable way that so many England teams have gone in the past. There were times when Gareth Southgate’s young team could have won this game, a window in the first half when it felt like they could run away with it while Croatia, like all good teams hung on and waited for the wind to change. A miraculous sporting nation of just 4.1 million souls, they will play France in the World Cup final on Sunday.
It is, after all, not coming home. It is not even coming back for a brief look-around and a robust discussion about the relative merits of a back three without a natural leftsided defender. Soon, when the Premier League season begins afresh, this may feel like a dream, a dizzying tour of sun-drenched old Soviet Union strongholds watched through a mist of beer tossed over heads in box parks and conventional parks too. Only the third World Cup semi-final in 68 years for the England team and yet still a nagging regret at missed opportunities.
Afterwards, Gareth Southgate seemed reluctant to draw conclusions and he will know that there was something of the old England in the way that his team were rattled, going from a side that looked like they could not lose this semi-final to one just about hanging on. This Croatia team, 20 years on from their semi-final defeat by France, had the tournament ringcraft that every England World Cup team bar one have lacked, vulnerable for the second time in the knockout stages to a goal late in the day.
When Kieran Trippier swept in a free-kick after five minutes it soon felt like England might dominate a Croatia bent out of shape by the running of Southgate’s players, who were occupying the places that Luka Modric was supposed to be. The little maestro was enclosed by the England midfield and it would take until the second half when the Croatia captain began figuring out the route, emerging into space at last.
Not just him but Ivan Perisic too, who scored the equaliser on 68 minutes and dragged his team back into the game, making the second for Mandzukic.
If he can do it against France after three extra-time periods in the knockout stages, then Perisic could yet eclipse Modric as the leading player in this team and this tournament. Although it never looked that way in the first half with England in the ascendant and Croatia wobbling all over pitch.
Their left-back, Ivan Strinic, was falling apart, and in attack Raheem Sterling felt just one clean strike on goal from football immortality.
Dejan Lovren benefited from the early leniency of Turkish referee Cuneyt Cakir in a period of the game when the Liverpool defender was committing fouls he felt he had no option but to make. He shoved Kane and kicked Sterling in the space of six minutes but did not get the yellow card that would have made him vulnerable.
The England captain still looks the most likely candidate to finish the World Cup as the golden boot winner but this was a strange evening for him, in which he missed one first-half chance and then faded after the break. He is judicious in possession and draws the foul well, but his reputation is built on goals and when he was presented with his best chance of the game on 29 minutes it was saved by goalkeeper Danjiel Subasic.
That was not the only miss, there was one for Jesse Lingard, too, later in the first half when Kane drove forward with the ball and then Dele Alli laid it off to England’s little fizzing energy-drink of a midfielder.
Lingard’s shot was stroked wide of Subasic’s post and again you wondered whether these players knew that, looming in the future, there would inevitably be a time when Croatia seized the initiative and had their chances too.
England’s goal had come early, from a premium free-kick conceded by Modric, of all people, who clipped the heels of Alli. Even then at that stage, England had worked it well from Lingard’s tidy knockdown and suddenly there was a great chance, on the edge of the box and central. Trippier stroked the free-kick over the wall and past Subasic’s right hand like he was slotting the last ball in the garden through an inviting open garden shed door.
After 28 minutes, Strinic passed the ball straight into touch on his side of the pitch and his manager Zlatko Dalic allowed his despair to show itself for a second before composing himself. By the end of the night Dalic, a former footballer who never won an international cap and coached most recently in the Gulf states, was in his red chequerboard shirt and describing how he had watched the first three games in the 1998 tournament as a fan.
The game changed after the break and as it went into the final 10 minutes, England’s share of possession in the second half dropped to 30 per cent.
They were being pressed much higher up the pitch by Croatia and although they found their way again in the first period of extratime, England never rediscovered the form of the first half
When Sime Vrsaljko picked the ball up on the right and whipped in a cross on 68 minutes it felt like the kind of delivery that England had dealt with all night.
Kyle Walker dived for it and with the ball at shoulder height, Perisic jabbed a foot in above the head of the defender and steered it past Jordan Pickford. Minutes later Perisic hit the post. He went close again.
In extra-time there were chances that will be forgotten in time, including a John Stones header cleared off the line by Vrsaljko. A great save from Pickford from Mandzukic’s shot.
Then with six minutes of the 120 left Perisic out-jumped Trippier for a header, and Mandzukic was first off the mark, burying a shot past Pickford before England were able to react. The margins are fine, but the bigger picture was clear by then, and it did not look good for England.