Hannah Hampton is up for the corner. It’s the fourth minute of injury time in the Euro 2025 semi-final. Every England player bar Chloe Kelly is within 20 yards of Italy’s goal. And as blisteringly underwhelming as England have been all night, this is still a team with an unerring sense of their own narrative, a belief in themselves, a taste for the dramatic climax.
The noise builds to a roar. The roar builds to a scream. Kelly puts her corner straight into the side netting. Hampton hangs her head and gallops back into more familiar territory. End of the road. England are done.
Of course there had been the usual gripes about Italian gamesmanship, the eternity Laura Giuliani was taking over goal kicks, the constant injury breaks, the sudden random attacks of cramp.
The real timewasters here, though, were not Italy but England, who on a shapeless and lawless night in Geneva conspired to waste a nation’s entire evening, before finally doing the thing they were paid to do.
Sarina Wiegman had wasted 76 minutes of this game tinkering around the edges of an approach that was patently not working. Once again she had treated her substitutions as if she were paying for them out of her own pocket. Kelly, one of England’s brightest players of the tournament, had spent the night doing sprints up the touchline in a bib. Michelle Agyemang was once a Wembley ball girl, and here she was again: marooned on the sidelines, a peripheral figure, waiting to be called briefly into action.
At the start of the second half England’s players had gathered in a huddle, presumably in order to learn each other’s names and positions. Hi, I’m Alex, left-back. Hi, I’m Ella, attacking midfield. Lauren, left wing, how you doing? And if the heist against Sweden had a kind of stirring Blitz spirit to it, tones and shades, a clear sense of purpose, here England were simply pointless, one-dimensional, lacking in craft or identity or even the most basic idea of how they wanted to play.
At which point, you might point out – not unreasonably – that England won. And fair enough. Agyemang at the death, Kelly’s penalty rebound, the surge of endorphins, the fans in the stands reeling to Sweet Caroline: great moments, brilliant memories. Proof of the spirit and guts and resilience, and all that. And rinse, and repeat. The final on Sunday against Germany or Spain will be another occasion of national significance, another milestone for the growing women’s game.
And so you might say the end justified the means, if in fact it were possible to identify any means. Against a team far inferior to Sweden, flagging and flailing, deprived of their best player through injury and offering pretty much nothing between the 35th and the 85th minutes, England had nothing to offer but slow-cooked panic. It was a vindication of nothing, an indication of nothing but the ability of a deeper, more talented squad to bungle a result through blind luck.
None of this felt like the result of a calculated masterplan, or even a stronger mentality. Italy defended magnificently all game and but for a fumble by Giuliani and a slightly naive challenge by Emma Severini would have enjoyed the greatest night in their history. Even the winning goal owed itself to dumb fortune: Kelly’s penalty was so straight that there was barely any angle for Giuliani to push it to the side.
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This stuff matters, and not just because Spain and Germany are both far superior opponents with the equipment to teach this limp England side a severe lesson. For a nation as integral to the game’s development and history as England, that loves this sport as much as England, this side’s inability to express itself through its football is going to be the sort of thing that holds future teams back. How should England look and feel? What are its basic principles of play? How should we as a public identify with them, beyond a shirt and an empty nationalism and some vaguely lifestyle-themed content?
Win or lose on Sunday, this generation of great England footballers has had its time. The future is Agyemang and Aggie Beever-Jones, Grace Clinton and Maya Le Tissier, and arguably the present should be too. Perhaps we are discovering the limits of Wiegman’s staunch loyalty to her class of 2022, her stubborn persistence with players and patterns that have long since been decrypted by the rest of Europe.
The final whistle blows and after the celebrations subside, England’s players decide to link hands and run towards their supporters. Even here there is a kind of incoherence to them, everyone running at different speeds, everyone seeing the move at different times.
And of course there is still one game to go. One more chance to make an impression. One more chance to produce a level of football we have not seen from England yet at this tournament, arguably not really seen from this side for a couple of years. England have cheated death twice. They will not be allowed to do so again.