There was a collective puffing of cheeks by England’s players at the final whistle as realisation dawned that it was over. They ended up victims of Belgium’s best-ever World Cup showing, beaten by a team who will be welcomed by King Philippe at Château de Laeken on Sunday before a parade in Brussels’ Grand Place. England intend to fly back, quietly and without fanfare, to Birmingham with holidays on their mind. Instinctively, it feels as if they might merit more.
Gareth Southgate’s young and talented squad have surpassed all expectations. No England team have bettered the fourth place they claimed, unexpectedly and joyously, on foreign soil. Plenty of those on the outside looking in will offer reminders that they escaped high-calibre opposition courtesy of a kind draw, and that Belgium, ranked third in the world, beat them twice. The manager admitted there was a gulf in quality and experience between the two sides. But, in the context of the anxious mess England have appeared at recent major finals, this campaign has been regenerative.
They return with their reputation revived, a squad inspired to improve further and bolstered by the positive experience they have enjoyed over four weeks in Russia. Their real frustration had been endured in the Luzhniki in midweek. This afterthought in St Petersburg, a game played amid the locals’ Mexican waves and those familiar chants of “Rossiya”, should not taint anything that came before. Their rather sluggish first-half showing could be explained by the reality they had been granted not much more than 48 hours, and virtually no training or preparation time, to recover from that crushing disappointment. A numbing sense of anticlimax had inevitably pursued them north from Moscow.
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