The End of the Line

So that’s it. The seasonal adventure into optimism - “Can England win this time?” - is over for another year. It could have been a lot worse. True, there was Harry’s second penalty, and the interesting absence of abuse shelled out to Rashford, Saka and Sancho last time. But apart from that, we didn’t make huge mistakes, we did get the French rattled from time to time, and they are a very good side. “Last eight” is probably a realistic assessment of our ranking at the moment, and if we could shed the old assumption that we used to have an empire and ought to be world champions, that’d be fine.

One thing we really do need is decent commentators. I watch matches with the sound turned off, but for this one relented because my son was joining me. He doesn’t rate the commentators either, but feels happier with the sound on. So we get Sam Matterface continually droning on about why England should have had a penalty (despite the resident expert referee telling him that the decision was right), and not telling us any of the interesting stuff - why does Griezemann have so much room, but Bellingham doesn’t? He’s got a resident e-player next to him, but doesn’t encourage him to offer comments, preferring instead to unload his huge store of unnecessary information and jingoistic waffle. Surely we can do better than this?