To reach history, England first had to suffer. To shed the pain of the past, the Lionesses had to stare into the brink, and Wembley had to feel as if history was repeating itself again as penalties loomed. It was happening again, it had to be, that in a final of a major tournament and after weeks of making an overwhelmingly positive impact, that England would too be hit with the cold, crushing realisation that it simply wasn’t meant to be.
But this is a different team, unburdened by past scars, whose journey to Wembley under Sarina Wiegman had instead been fuelled by the opportunity to forge its future, to change the sport and, with it, wider society too. You could feel that emotion in Chloe Kelly’s winner, scrambled over the line but followed by the rawest of celebrations. That joy will carry into the night, and in the years to come might be remembered as the moment where everything changed.
To get there, though, and for it to actually come home, England had to earn it. Travelling through London and walking down Wembley Way in the hours before the match felt in itself a celebration of what England have been able to achieve during their run to the Euro 2022 final. The beauty of football, though, is that the harsh, grating and gradual pain of extra time in a major tournament final does not allow for such emotions. With that, another major landmark for the Lionesses is that record numbers went through the same horrible torture.
This was fraught, this was tense, and Germany threatened to make it the cruellest of endings. Wembley was deafening when England attacked in the opening stages, it was even louder as Ella Toone lifted the ball over Merle Frohms for England’s opening goal, but Lina Magull’s equaliser and the hush that descended spoke of the collective realisation that such victories do not simply unfold on this stage – especially against the eight-time champions.
This fact will be forgotten, but it had not gone to plan for England. Germany executed theirs. They take pleasure in adapting to their opponent’s strengths and nullifying them. For England, this was construed as an edgy, bitty game that saw Lena Oberdorf and Sara Dabritz use their physicality, breaking the game up into hard, rough, indigestible chunks. In between, Germany pressed, squeezed and then suffocated their opponents.
Wiegman stood on the touchline and scanned, never flustered. It is true that England’s strength off the bench proved decisive, with both goals being scored by substitutes, but this was also weeks of preparation coming together, delivered even as the pressure grew and the significance of England’s run to the final and the societal and cultural impact grew with it too.
This is, it seems we now know, how to win a major tournament, and it’s a story written by England. Wiegman may not have foreseen how England’s crowning moment arrived, but the success of this team, before you even get to its wider implications, was the belief they felt in each other, and of a squad where every player knew their role.
There were no tears, no penalty heartbreak, not even a winning goal that may or may not have crossed the line. There was only Kelly, a player who spent a year out on the sidelines due to a serious knee injury and only returned in April, whipping her shirt off and screaming into the night. The pain, and the suffering, has been left behind.
