Dani Olmo roared and pushed his chest out so hard he turned the alpha male meter up to 11, looking more like Gladiator-era Russell Crowe than dainty Spanish midfielder. Marc Cucurella joined the testosterone fest and pushed Olmo so firmly in celebration he almost toppled him. Olmo’s scream was the guttural cry of the victor.
He knew his header off the line had probably secured his team Euro 2024. There was almost more joy in the brilliant defensive save than the sweeping moves that won Spain the game. Not content with leading England a dance in midfield, Olmo had turned instinctive defender.
All the tropes were there for England, the team of wondrous moments at these championships. It had Ollie Watkins winning the corner and Cole Palmer involved. There was Ivan Toney striding purposefully on with seconds remaining to cause chaos. This is how England arrived in this final, with heart-stopping, nerve-shredding brilliant moments.
Memories of the football England played for the vast majority of Euro 2024, including the final, will fade. But if, in 20 years, someone puts together a highlight reel of their goals, you might mistake them for Brazil, 1982. There will be Jude Bellingham launching himself improbably at a ball he should have no expectation of reaching to score deep in stoppage time against Slovakia. There will be Bukayo Saka cutting inside and unleashing a sublime strike against Switzerland and Watkins turning the Netherlands’ Stefan de Vrij inside out with one of the strikes of the tournament in the semi-final.
No one could match them for drama. What they did not often have was a coherent system, nor could they establish dominant control of a game from the off. They had to be prodded into life, falling behind in all their knockout games.
Cautiously setting out your stall, despite a collection of formidable attacking players, worked for France in 2018 but has not done so since and it has not worked for England. Yet here on 89 minutes, they had their last extraordinary moment, perhaps the last hurrah of the Gareth Southgate era.
Except it will not go down in history alongside Watkins, Bellingham, David Platt, Paul Gascoigne and the rest – it will remain a footnote of what might have been. It turns out that if you keep gambling on a special moment getting you back in a game, in effect keep betting the house on black, then eventually the roulette wheel comes up red.
And yet, those fine margins. They weren’t far away. The passage of play that led to this moment came with one minute of normal time remaining, which is often when England have sprung into life. This was the Bellingham we came to see, bossing midfield, though interestingly from a deeper role.
“Look for me,” Watkins had told Bellingham when he came on against the Netherlands and here he did with a sublime ball, beating both Spain’s central defenders. Watkins could not quite execute the drag-back and spin he attempted. Had he done so it would have been a goal to top the semi-final finish but, even so, Nacho Fernández was more than happy to put it away for a corner. Spain were belatedly at panic stations.
On came Toney for Phil Foden, reprising the Slovakia moment. Palmer was entrusted to deliver the corner and how he did, direct to Declan Rice, who came charging in and powered a header you felt would break the back of the net. It was so hard that Unai Simón was happy to flap it away with his fingertips even though the ball was very much alive and heading straight to Marc Guéhi. For Spain, it was needs must. The defender, superb throughout the tournament, must have seen history beckon for a 10th of a second.
He strained his neck, he even seemed to have found some rare space among the clutch of bodies, and 30,000 England fans were poised to repeat the frenzied celebrations of Gelsenkirchen, Düsseldorf and Dortmund. With just a slight shift of his weight, Olmo was there, heading clear so hard that the ball was almost out of the danger zone. Rice’s return header was well over and Olmo could celebrate, Cucurella could assault him in his delight and Spain knew they were there.
For England, the moments had finally run out. They started the Southgate era attempting to impose patterns of play and dominate the ball better. They have ended it getting over the line, somehow, anyhow. It is not wrong to win a tournament that way. It just turns out Spain’s way is better. Ask Olmo.
