ATLANTA – Hindsight is everything but we all saw it coming. In homes and public houses up and down England, you turned to your left or right and concluded that England were sitting too deep and inviting too much pressure. You didn’t even need to consider yourself an aficionado or expert. How can that happen: a nation shouting at the man supposed to know best and the nation being right?
There was Mexico, when it worked. But then Mexico didn’t actually have a brilliant set of attackers and midfielders. Argentina did. They wanted the pitch to be small and they wanted the best player of all time to have seconds in which to plan his next move and England gave Argentina both. Some things happen for a reason and sometimes that reason is you.
If you have proven your capability to control a match, its tempo and its destiny. If you have attacking depth on the bench that has proven its worth. Then why on earth would you let that slip and invite a wave that you cannot hold? It was unfathomable then and it will remain so on Thursday morning as England awakens to one of those hangovers.
There has been an otherworldliness to this England World Cup campaign, ethereal, intangible strands that make it feel unreal and impossible to hold in your hand. We spent a group stage wondering whether England were good and most of the knockout stage presuming that we must be. And now we don’t really know again.
