PK WIN FOR U.K.
England finally wins a World Cup shootout, beats Colombia to advance to quarters
LONDON — All night long in The Greencoat Boy pub, with signs up the street for Victoria Station one way and Parliament Square the other, on this night when London and England got a kind of sports moment we maybe haven’t gotten in our country — everybody behind one team — since our hockey kids beat the Russians in Lake Placid in 1980, they had been loud and happy and singing football songs and “God Save the Queen.” And somehow they made you feel as if their country’s World Cup game in Russia against Colombia was being played at home, in pubs like this across the city and around England.
Harry Kane, their star, had scored on a penalty kick early in the second half, and it looked as if Jordan Pickford, the goalkeeper was going to make the goal stand up. England was going to play Sweden this coming weekend for a spot in the semifinals of the World Cup. So this became a night when England did seem to have one, loud, happy football voice, alternating their real anthem with their football anthem, called “Three Lions” for the three lions on their team’s shirts, about football comin’ home.
Only then Colombia scored in the 93rd minute, a header off a corner kick, and it was as if somebody hit the mute buttom here and everywhere else, and England and its national team had been gut-punched, or gobsmacked. The Greencoat Boy pub was suddenly quiet. So was the street outside, and so was The Albert, an even bigger pub just up the street, two floors filled with TV sets and fans and suddenly a sense of doom, as if they were suddenly rooting for the Cavs after they’d blown Game 1 of the NBA Finals at the end of regulation.
“We had played so well for the 90 minutes,” Gareth Southgate, the English manager, would say later on TV.
So the game was tied. So then came a half-hour of extra time, and finally this tournament and this moment would come down to penalty kicks, and if there were fans in Greencoat Boy who didn’t know England had never won a World Cup game that had come down to penalties, somebody sure told them.
And even though they expected the worst at the Greencoat Pub and everywhere in the city and everywhere in the country, there was still something that made we Americans in the room envious. Because we don’t have anything like this in sports in America. We have cities and we have fan bases, and we saw what it was like when the Eagles won a Super Bowl for Philadelphia and the Cubs finally won a World Series on the North Side of Chicago. We know it was like this for Giants fans in New York and New Jersey when the Giants beat the Patriots in that first Super Bowl in Glendale, Ariz. when the Patriots were 18-0.
But this was different Tuesday night. This was a whole country behind its team. The fan base was the country, holding its breath as Colombia went ahead 3-2 in penalty kicks. But then they missed. Shot off the crossbar, and The Greencoat Pub went mad again. Still a chance to get to the weekend, get to Sweden, with a chance to play the winner of Croatia vs. Russia after that.
It was moving up on 10 o’clock on this street in Victoria. And then, somehow, because this was sports and everything can change in the next moment, a night that had gone all wrong in the 93rd minute suddenly went right for England.
But England scored and now it was 3-all. Then Pickford made a truly amazing save, diving to his right and then, at the last possible moment, throwing his left hand in the air and deflecting a shot by Carlos Bacca. Now if Eric Dier, Harry Kane’s teammate with Tottenham Hotspur, could put the ball behind David Ospina, the Colombian goalie, England got to the weekend. They got to keep playing.
Dier went to Ospina’s right. Ospina laid out the way Pickford had laid out against Bacca. The shot was just too hard, too accurate. Ospina got a small piece of it with his right hand, but then the ball was behind him and England had won.
Now The Greencoat Boy pub, which advertised football and Wimbledon tennis and gin and ale on a blackboard in the middle of the room,
which had red-and-white paper Union Jacks hung from the ceiling, went completely mad, the way the city and the country went mad. Now the pubs were wonderfully loud again, on a wonderful night to be in London to watch the World Cup. Now they started singing again, this rousing football song written by a group called the Lightning Seeds, one celebrating England hosting the European championships back in 1996: “It's coming home It's coming Football's coming home It's coming home It's coming home It's coming Football's coming home England have done it.” Harry Kane, the star, did it. So did the keeper, Jordan Pickford, sticking his hand up in the air like a shot blocker in basketball. Finally Eric Dier did it, burying one behind the Colombian goalie. Yeah. England did it. Long way from home, they brought it home.