Bukayo Saka turns towards the crowd and pumps his arms like an orchestra conductor, demands more noise, and the noise explodes like thunder, lifting the Olympiastadion off its stone foundations. Back in the England goal, Jordan Pickford is waving an imaginary lasso. There are 75 minutes on the clock in the Euro 2024 final. Cole Palmer has just scored a spectacular equaliser to make it 1-1. England have an attacking throw-in deep in Spanish territory. How can this be the end?
But it is the end, and afterwards Gareth Southgate, even through his haze of distress and disappointment, the noises still ringing in his ears, the consequences and the contingencies, will identify this as the end. Can a throw-in change the course of nations? Can a throw-in decide a game? Can a throw-in encapsulate 58 years of English tournament dysfunction? Let’s find out!
England have won the ball back after the goal, working it forward through Jude Bellingham and then through Saka. Palmer, adrenaline and endorphins still surging through him, then tries to jig past Fabián Ruiz, who puts in a desperate tackle and bunts the ball out of play. As he regains his balance, Ruiz stumbles a little. He looks exhausted. His shirt is absolutely soaked in sweat. The roar of the England fans is primeval. The clock shows 74:49.
Kyle Walker trots forward to take the throw and Palmer gives the ball up for him. Walker studies his options – the long throw into the mixer, the short one to Palmer or Saka, who are wheeling around in front of him like bobbins – and doesn’t like any of them. So he waits. Perhaps he even freezes momentarily. By the time Walker finally releases the ball, it has spent 31 seconds – or 3.4% of the remaining time available in the match – in his hands. The noise has died down a little.
Walker, a powerful man, takes a run-up. Winds up those fearsome, Carrington-carved core muscles. Hurls the ball with all his might. It skims through the Berlin night, skips across the turf, and eventually finds its way to … John Stones in defence, 40 yards behind him. But Stones is under pressure and returns it to Pickford. Pickford is also under pressure and boots the ball straight out of play for a Spain goal-kick. Ollie Watkins scowls at him. Pickford shrugs and grimaces at once, like a man who has stolen a hedgehog, stuffed it down his trousers and is now trying to play it cool in front of the parish elders. The clock shows 75:29. England’s little frisson of post-goal momentum has simply evaporated, gone, stolen off into the night.
Spain get the ball back. England’s midfield are pressing Spain’s midfield, five on five. Watkins is therefore left to close down the two centre-halves and the goalkeeper Unai Simón all by himself. Palmer then comes up, Saka comes up after him, but that leaves Marc Cucurella free on the left and, after Simon plays off him, Spain are away: camped in the England half, working it from left to right, right to centre, centre to left. Eventually a cross comes in and Stones heads it out for a corner. The clock shows 77:40.
The corner is cleared by Bellingham and then Palmer. Spain get the ball back. England have collapsed into a basic 4-4-2 defensive shape and Spain can simply walk it through them. Marc Guéhi shepherds the ball out for a goal-kick. Pickford boots it straight back to Spain. Ruiz advances, Phil Foden tackles, the ball hits Declan Rice and now finally – more than six minutes after the throw-in – England have actual possession again. The clock shows 80:57.
But after six minutes of chasing, England are ragged and exhausted. Palmer clumsily gathers Bellingham’s short pass, but Martín Zubimendi bundles him off it and Spain can build again. Lamine Yamal has a shot that Pickford does well to save. Spain make a substitution. Stones, under pressure, tries to find Watkins with a hopeless long ball, and Spain get it back. Rice tackles Nico Williams to put the ball out for a Spain corner. The clock shows 84:06.
Finally, in the 86th minute, Guéhi pumps the ball long, Spain win a throw, play three forward passes straight up the centre of the pitch, Cucurella crosses, Mikel Oyarzabal scores, and Spain – after a little light defending – are European champions. So what exactly happened there?
Between the Stones back-pass in the 76th minute and a Bellingham aerial duel in the 88th, England did not have a single touch in the Spain half. In that time, Spain had 80 touches in the England half. Watkins goes 16 minutes without a touch. Spain have managed to kill off the England surge, quieten the crowd, take a rest and carve out three or four good openings. And yes, this is what they do and they do it brilliantly. Other countries are allowed to be good at football.
But remember that this was a situation generated entirely by England. They had the ball deep in Spanish territory and chose to fling it back into their own. “We had a throw-in in their third of the pitch,” Southgate lamented when asked why England were unable to capitalise on their equalising goal. “We had an opportunity to keep the ball there, but we played backwards, out of the pressure, and we didn’t get the ball again. So there was a turning point, if you like.”
“Southgate’s England in microcosm: torn between optimism and caution,” I wrote after the 1-0 win against Serbia, another game in which England’s head of steam curiously and suddenly dissipated. There, Serbia broke through the press and a spooked England inexplicably retreated 10 yards down the pitch. Here Walker had options that would keep up the attacking pressure on Spain, but which would also put the ball at greater risk. Walker chose to keep the ball, but in so doing he gave up control.
There are probably four separate but interlinking forces at work here: one physical, one tactical, one mental, one cultural. England by this stage of the game are exhausted, having twice been taken to extra time and with one day fewer than Spain to recover. Attacking football requires physical bravery, the ability to seek out and win duels, to make sharp sacrificial sprints, to hold off burly defenders and ride challenges. Sterile possession football, tapping it back to Stones and back to Guéhi and back to Pickford, requires none of this. It’s easy work. This bit is very much not on Southgate.
And yet this is an attacking set piece, a chance to work the ball into a dangerous area, the sort of situation Southgate and his coaches must have plotted out in advance. Why is there no playbook, no set of choreographed routines or movements? Why is flinging the ball 40 yards backwards (and still into trouble) even an option? This bit is on Southgate.
But of course Walker does not make these judgements in a vacuum. For virtually the whole of the last eight years with Manchester City and England, Walker will hardly ever have faced an opposing team that has technical superiority over his own. What he knows is possession, space, time. How often in the last decade has he been in a situation where he can give the ball away and his team will not see it again for 10 minutes?
Throw in the stakes, the magnitude of the occasion, the state of the match, and this is essentially a moment of intense and unfamiliar stress, even for a player as experienced as Walker. Perhaps it is no surprise that in this moment of boss-level challenge, he opts to retreat into the comforting embrace of his City teammate Stones, the ley line of an old folk memory going all the way back to Russia in 2018. This bit is slightly on Southgate. His side should be sufficiently tournament-hardened to be able to know when pressure needs to be put back on the opposition. And if they don’t, the gameplan should change accordingly.
But England tried to be more enterprising at this tournament, to throw more attackers on to the pitch, and have paradoxically found themselves more inert and disjointed than ever. Brilliant footballers have bailed them out at vital times, and this too does not happen in a vacuum. The irony here, perhaps, is that Southgate has leaned too heavily into the court of public opinion, tried to fit in too many of the A-listers, tried to win an international tournament in an authentically English way, ignoring the fact that the authentically English way is not to win at all.
The immaculate super-structure that saw them through 2018-2022 has basically broken down. In trying to wring every drop out of the individual talent at his disposal, Southgate has largely abandoned the principle of collective responsibility, allowing the likes of Bellingham and Harry Kane and Foden to choose their own adventure on the pitch, to feel their way through the game, to trust in their own decision-making skills. This has generated some of the most unforgettable individual moments ever known in the history of England football, but it also does occasionally mean Kyle Walker will take it upon himself to throw the ball 40 yards backwards.
And no, by the way: one throw-in cannot sum up 58 years of hurt. This is a simple game wrapped up in layers of complexity, the “what” subsumed in the “why”. England were beaten by a better team. But why are England so rarely the better team in games like these? You lose on penalties, so you fix the penalties. You lose at set pieces, so you fix the set pieces. You lose because you can’t pass the ball, so you try and pass the ball. You lose because of the unbearable scrutiny and pressure of the environment, the club cliques, the joyless camps, and so you organise a padel league and put some inflatable unicorns in the pool.
And now what? You lose because your star striker balloons a penalty. You lose because your right-back throws the ball in the wrong direction. It will be of no comfort whatsoever to Southgate or his players. But their excuses are at least becoming less and less plausible.
