England stagger on at the World Cup – but towards destiny or the trapdoor?
There’s a chill in the air as Chloe Kelly steps forward from the centre circle. It could be a sudden swirl of wind or the icy fingers of fate, nobody really knows for sure. Millions of eyes follow her as she approaches the ball: eight paces, then six, then four, then two. She chews her bottom lip, sucks her cheeks in and out, as if she’s trying to taste what happens next.
Nobody expected it to get this far a few hours ago, but then nobody expected Germany to go out in the group stage a few days ago, and nobody expected women’s football to be played in front of sell-out crowds of 50,000 a few years ago. Kelly knows, better than most, that the history of women’s football is not written on the balance of probabilities. You have to write it yourself.
It has been a wild night, a ragged night, a night soaked in sweat and nausea, in the best of intentions and the worst of decisions. For most of the day Brisbane has been coated in fine rain: a persistent and nagging drizzle, the Georgia Stanway of drizzles. Time has slowed and stretched out and now, as Kelly begins her run-up with a hop and a skip, it comes to a complete stop.
Kelly scores.
So for England, the pages keep turning. There will be introspection, but not yet an inquest. Lauren James may well have kicked her last ball of England’s tournament, but her actions will no longer define England’s tournament. Alessia Russo will get one more chance to put things right. Keira Walsh will get five more days to work her way back to full fitness. Sarina Wiegman will get five more days to fix what went wrong here.
Of course you had to feel for Nigeria, who were laid out on the turf even before the penalty shootout had started. They came with a plan and executed it perfectly: overloading the flanks, attacking the space behind England’s wing-backs, winning their duels, keeping their shape at the back, forcing England to cough up possession in midfield. Halimatu Ayinde did an exquisite marking job on James, inducing the rush of blood that saw James dismissed.
In hindsight, that was also the moment when the game began to run England’s way. Having studied Wiegman’s tactical shift in the China game, Nigeria planned for virtually every contingency here: an England 3-5-2, an England 4-3-3, Walsh in midfield, no Walsh in midfield, a counterattacking masterclass, a defensive rearguard. But they did not foresee a circumstance in which they would be under pressure to break England down, did not plan on being favourites. Nigeria expected everything except being expected to win.
Perhaps victory will soften the judgments of James a little. Obviously she screwed up. But people screw up every day in their jobs, and most of us have the luxury of doing so without a television audience of millions. At its heart this was not a failure of character but of sporting imagination: an inability to find the solutions required of her on the pitch. Throughout her breakthrough season she has been praised for playing with the freedom and irreverence of a footballer who plays like nobody is watching. Well, a sneaky stamp on the pelvis is also the sort of thing you do when you think nobody is watching.
And in her absence England seemed to rediscover the cohesion and sense of purpose so lacking in the previous 85 minutes. Wiegman, sensing what was coming, summoned Rachel Daly and Jess Carter to the touchline as soon as the decision was referred to the video referee. Daly moved up; Carter shuffled over to left-back; Walsh’s habit of dropping deep to receive the ball made far more sense when she was playing in front of two central defenders rather than three. The introduction of Bethany England offered a more robust outlet up front. And at the other end, Asisat Oshoala had barely a whiff of goal in extra time.
These are the threads upon which England must build in the coming days. There will be a temptation to frame this victory as an undeserved triumph, an abject display redeemed by the lottery of penalties. But as poor as England were, they were also better than Nigeria at adapting to the shifts in the game, better at defending their lines, better at executing knockout football’s most important skill of all.
And really if this tournament has taught us anything at all, it is that you are only ever as good as your next 90 minutes. Germany were sumptuous in their first group game; Brazil kicked off with a contender for goal of the tour
nament; the United States pretty much propelled themselves to the last 16 on reputation and self-image alone. The same England that looked like champions in waiting against China looked like ballast here. Styles make fights, and in a tournament of such dizzying diversity in approaches and tactics, no two performances are ever going to look quite the same.
All you can really do is take the shot in front of you. Jamaica or Colombia await Wiegman’s side next, and for all the abundant optimism back home it would be remiss to look beyond that. England may be favourites or they may not be favourites. England may be struggling towards their destiny or staggering towards the trapdoor. Nobody really knows for sure. All that matters is that this is a story they can still write themselves.