ENGLAND ADVANCES
World Cup curse broken to make it to quarterfinals
Of course it went to penalties. It always goes to penalties. And of course everyone expected England to lose. Because England always loses when it goes to penalties. It has become something of a theme. Or a curse. 1990. 1996. 1998. 2004. 2006. 2012. Six major tournaments in 22 years (including the European Championship), and England, brimming with high hopes and big-name players, going out in the cruelest possible way.
But this is a new England, they say. A team of young players with smiles on their faces and a spring in their step and the belief that it does not always have to be the way it has always been.
And this England does not lose on penalties. At least it did not Tuesday night, outlasting a game and rugged Colombia, 4-3, in a shootout after the teams played to a 1-1 tie. “There’s been a lot about this being a young team,” England’s Harry Kane said. “We’ve grown up a lot out there on that pitch tonight.” Midfielder Eric Dier delivered the final blow, slamming his attempt into the lower left corner under goalkeeper David Ospina after Colombia failed to convert its last two attempts. England’s goalkeeper, Jordan Pickford, had set the stage by pawing away Carlos Bacca’s fifth attempt for Colombia with a dive to his right.
Kane, Marcus Rashford and Kieran Trippier also converted for England in the shootout, sparing Jordan Henderson from a lifetime of ignominy after his penalty kick, England’s third, was saved by Ospina.
“It was a night I just knew we were going to get over the line,” England manager Gareth Southgate said.
The result came so quickly — a miss, then a make — and was in many ways so unexpected given England’s history that its players did not
seem to know what to do. Dier peeled off to his right, eventually collapsing under a pile of teammates. Trippier seemed caught in between, jumping in place next to the dogpile as the England reserves raced past him to thow themselves on their teammates.
“It was nice to get that one off our backs,” Kane said. “It’s a huge relief to take going forward.”
They will collect themselves for what is next when they are ready. An unlikely date with Sweden awaits in the quarterfinals on Saturday in Samara.
But even in a tournament in which all had been going smoothly for England, the team did not reach the final eight without flirting with disaster. England was winning (mostly) and scoring goals (often), and as it rolled into Moscow on Tuesday, even the road to the latter stages of the World Cup was opening up right in front of them.
But Colombia arrived with little interest in feeding the growing can-Englandwin-this-thing narrative. And even after Kane seemed to put England into cruise control by converting a penalty in the 57th minute, the Colombians fought — a bit too roughly for English tastes at certain points — for their World Cup life to the bitter end.
Kane’s goal — his sixth here — had given England a 1-0 lead and pushed him to the top of the race for the Golden Boot as the World Cup’s top scorer. But when Yerry Mina rose above Harry Maguire to head in the tying goal three minutes into injury time at the end of regulation, the heavily proColombia crowd inside Spartak Stadium roared out of despair and right back into the game, and the feeling that England might blow it all — again — hung in the air.
This was England’s first knockoutround win at a major tournament since 2006, when it beat Ecuador at the World Cup before falling to Portugal on penalties. The exits since then have seemed to alternate between galling failure (a loss to tiny Iceland at the 2016 European Championship) and utter humiliation (a group-stage exit from the 2014 World Cup, and a 4-1 thrashing by Germany in South Africa in the one before that). Before, and after, were those half-dozen penalty shootouts, and those half-dozen England defeats.
This World Cup, though, has been a complete turnaround in mood and results. England, which had long wilted under its country’s critical news media gaze, showed up in a positive mood, and preaching that this time — finally — would be different.