Cruel on Kane but England should feel no disgrace at losing to world’s best

Harry Kane sends a penalty over Hugo Lloris’s crossbar in the closing stages of England’s 2-1 defeat to France. Photograph: Mike Egerton/PA

For a while, in those endless, scrolling micro-moments of gape, shock, acceptance and slowly gathering grief, the ball didn’t look like it was actually going to come down. There was always something weird about its angle, something anti-gravitational.

The night was suddenly quiet, the ball a lovely white thing out there all alone in all that space. Maybe it could just stay there. Maybe this thing could just stretch out and not actually happen, or not happen enough to matter.