Dreamers, start dreaming. Blind optimism can often reign supreme during a World Cup, but the path being left in England’s wake now has the plausibility of turning even the most ardent negative pessimists into passionate positive realists.
This is by no means another increasingly tedious call of “it’s coming home”, more a realisation that the opportunity that lies before Gareth Southgate’s men is the greatest at a World Cup since Italia ’90.
And having lost the not-so-keenly-contested battle for the group, England’s seemingly ‘soft’ passage through to a potential semi-final has overnight transformed into a fairly kind route to the final – following Spain’s dramatic elimination on penalties on Sunday afternoon.
Cynics and killjoys are waiting in the wings to look down upon a successful World Cup campaign should England progress through a series of mild opposition, by World Cup standards.
But if – and it remains a big if – England are to truly fulfil their potential and overachieve in Russia, by winning the whole thing or otherwise, the words on the lips of the vast majority won’t be “lucky England”, but “who cares?”.
Even before Adnan Januzaj’s curler beat The Three Lions on Thursday evening, England were always likely to be in a win-win situation of sorts: either win and keep momentum – or surrender top spot while avoiding many of the big guns on the opposite side of the draw.
With the latter eventually occurring, the task of overcoming the tenacious Colombia has become all the more daunting, with the prospect of a Sweden or Switzerland quarter-final one that anybody would bite your hand, arm and leg off for before the tournament started.
Now that Spain are out, the toughest task on paper from then on looks to be Croatia – but who knows what the Russians have got in their veins up their sleeves.
You would be forgiven for thinking that it is England’s to lose, but Colombia cannot be taken lightly – with or without James Rodriguez. Colombia may well be the toughest opponent left on our side and yet they are the only ones that we will definitely face.
Evoking the memories of 1990 will be tricky for this side as many were not even born then – but there are similarities that could suggest we are destined for greatness.
Despite being unconvincing group winners, England had secured a path to semis by beating the likes of Belgium (nowhere near the force they are today) and Cameroon – without even playing well. We all know what happened after that, but we at least showed we were more than a match for West Germany when the going eventually got tough.
Of course, it would have been nice to beat Belgium, and the thinking, at least at the time, certainly was that winning trumped tactical pragmatism. But now, especially with the opportunity for glory widening since the defeat, there is surely little argument over which side of the draw we’d rather be on.
Because if (and when) England do succeed on their path to glory, in years to come, few will note how they achieved it – just that they did.
No one (really) cares about how Geoff Hurst’s second World Cup Final goal didn’t quite cross the line. Few belittle the French for winning a final that was essentially a walkover given the Brazilians’ overriding concern over Ronaldo. Not enough is made of both of Argentina’s World Cup wins allegedly being the bi-product of cheating. Hardly anyone realises West Germany made the 1982 final winning just a single game (with a sprinkling of unpunished karate).
History will overlook the details of how the World Cup winners come to be. In fact, it’s probably more likely that if England don’t make next week’s semi-final that we will be left wondering how we have not taken advantage of fate the one time it decides to favour us. Obviously, there is a hell of a long way to go, but this opportunity seems too huge to pass us by.
Come on England!
Comments
Post a Comment