A FAMILIAR STORY
As the England squad touched down in Birmingham airport at around the same time as the football Harry Kane struck for that second penalty landed somewhere in the middle of the Qatari desert, the post-mortems into England’s latest Big Stage exit continued in earnest. Narrowly beaten by an underperforming French team they had on the ropes after 70 minutes of Saturday’s tense quarter-final, the general consensus among an often difficult-to-please press pack is that England acquitted themselves well. They were, it was decided, unlucky to lose against the world champions and are in a much better place than they were after Euro Not 2020, a tournament in which they also failed to close out a knockout game against an elite side over which they were at one point dominant.
