Beating France on Saturday would represent so much more than landing a place in the World Cup semi-final.
Seeing off Kylian Mbappe, Oliver Giroud and the stunning defending champions would get us past a generational barrier that so many superb players have failed to get us past. Obviously there’s a long way to go. But this is the major hurdle, both physically and psychological. I've never watched an England team beat a top nation at the knockout stage of a major tournament.
There are so many occasions where we’ve been optimistic and had our hearts broken. I’m thinking about Portugal in 2006, Germany in 2010, Brazil in 2002 and Croatia four years ago. We couldn’t even win a knockout game until Colombia in 2018. Granted we’ve done really well in Qatar and, the first 35 minutes against Senegal apart, we were very impressive against them.
