We’re not out of the woods yet. In fact, we’ve barely left the forest

If there’s one piece of football commentary, other than Kenneth Wolstenholme’s “They think it’s all over…” line from 1966, that I’d rather never hear again it’s the pained “Ohhhhhhh!!!!!!!!” expelled by Barry Davies as Gareth Southgate’s penalty kick was saved in that Euro ’96 semi-final. There’s something about England playing Germany that gets under everyone’s skin in this country because, on balance, it’s been a litany of disappointments following that moment of Geoff Hurst brilliance, 55 years ago. 

Since 1966 the two sides have met six times in tournaments, famously without an England victory in any knockout-stage game, and two semi-finals - the 1990 World Cup and the 1996 Euros - decided on the aforementioned dreaded penalties. Thus, in the run-up to yesterday’s Round-of-16 encounter between the team Southgate now manages and the old nemesis, we had to endure that Davies exclamation yet again, along with the pizza ad-generating penalty flops by Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle in Turin, 21 years ago. We also had to endure the Lampard ‘ghost goal’ against Germany in Bloemfontein in 2010, which played a part in a 4-1 departure from the same stage of competition as last night’s match. That defeat led to my debut as a blogger, with me, in a foul mood the next morning, bashing out 1000 angry words on the commute from Amsterdam to Eindhoven (my first blog, What Would David Bowie Do? was created and online within an hour of me sitting down at my desk).

That first post was undoubtedly a cathartic expungement of the mental toxins that had built up throughout my lifetime when it comes to England-Germany (I was born a year after the ’66 World Cup triumph - to date, the last time England won anything of note). We’ve allowed it to stick in our collective craw, fuelled by tabloid xenophobia that just loves to make reference to events in the first half of the last century. So, to meet Germany so soon in the knockout stage of Euro 2020 laid down a psychological hurdle to Southgate’s squad, a group young enough not to have been born when their head coach committed that infamous kick. The rational and non-partisan amongst you might be tempted to say that England have only beaten a team in the first round of the knockout stage of the tournament, and that greater challenges lay ahead on Saturday with Andriy Schevchenko’s tournament dark horses, Ukraine. But that doesn’t diminish the sheer relief around the stadium at the final whistle, and in pub beer gardens, fan parks, town squares and elsewhere yesterday evening, and the sense of elation that came from a rare victory over an apparent bogey. 

Picture: Twitter/England

That euphoria masked what was, actually, quite a cagey game. Southgate, as his somewhat nervous disposition does project, is not the most bullish of tacticians, and for much of the game at Wembley, England seemed to soak up German pressure. The margins between Joachim Löw's eurocrats and England were thin, thin enough that Raheem Stirling and Harry Kane were able to make use of the relatively meagre scraps thrown their way to produce a memorable victory, while Jordan Pickford pulled off a couple of brilliant saves (though one was against Timo Werner at point-blank range, which means that the shot could have gone anywhere in north-west London…).

Picture: Twitter/England

Better minds than mine have described the game as a “tactical masterstroke” on Southgate’s part, but I’m not so sure. Raheem Sterling’s 75th-minute goal came against expectation, especially given the lengthy scrutiny of his season at Manchester City, but his record at these Euros, scoring against Croatia and the Czech Republic, gave him the edge over Harry Kane in terms of goalmouth hope. When he eventually scored last night, notably after Jack Grealish had come on to liven up England’s otherwise cagey acceptance of the German press, it was a proper No.9’s goal. It gave me little pleasure to see Chelsea’s Antonio Rüdiger beaten in the build-up, but it seemed to be the goal that kicked everything else into life, with Kane - finally - doing his job ten minutes later, after a neat pass from Luke Shaw to Grealish and then onto the Spurs striker’s head. 

Did we dare, then, to believe? After the eye-straining events on Monday in the Croatia-Spain and France-Switzerland fixtures, the nervous and the cynical alike wouldn’t take anything for granted. Then again, this probably hasn’t been Germany’s best tournament, not that such an observation should have made any difference. Years of disappointment have informed us that tournament football rarely follows form. Germany weren’t poor - and Chelsea’s Kai Havertz appears to have come good for his club just at the wrong time for England - but when it counted, England had just the right combination of skill and luck, the two magic, if hard to quantify, ingredients that make for progress in these competitions.

Victory over Germany, which didn’t involve extra time or, worse, penalties, feels sweet. I hope that it has genuinely banished whatever it was that commentators felt compelled to refer to, as if England's failure in the past was down to bad luck, bad karma, or some UEFA conspiracy (the same that stops the UK from ever winning the Eurovision Song Contest). The reality, however, is that - spoiler alert! - someone has to win. In 1990 and 1996, Germany's victorIes on penalties both came after 1-1 draws in extra time, which means it is reasonable to assume that both sides were as good as each other, and it was just bad luck/boot laces/rogue blades of grass that meant that Waddle, Pearce and Southgate’s spot kicks didn’t cross the line.

England do, however, bumble along with traditions of history and fairness underpinning their game. How often is their lack of guile at fault for other sides getting beneath their skin. In modern parlance, it’s “game management”. For all the ultra-competitive Premier League blood that has run through England squads passim, we’ve grown used to disappointment by the thinnest of margins. Perhaps, then - and without loading the gun - we should have hope about what happens next? Perhaps, then, the disappointments of the past have been the result of England just not having as much belief as their Teutonic opponent, or as much guile and cunning as other opponents? Perhaps they’ve been, well, too English…?

Picture: Twitter/England

The key, now, is for England to play without fear, but also to play with the right psychology. Gareth Southgate is a bright, intelligent football man who has experienced the ignominy of a saved penalty on the game’s biggest stage. He, more than anyone at Wembley Stadium last night, would have savoured the moment and enjoyed the catharsis. He, though, will know that the job is far from done. In fact, it’s only just beginning.

“This [was] an immense performance but at a cost emotionally and physically,” he said afterwards. “We have to recover well and show that mentally we are in the right space. It is a dangerous moment for us: we will have that warmth of success and the feeling around the country that we only have to turn up to win the thing, but we know it is going to be an immense challenge from here on in.”

Age is on his players’ side, not having been to the knockout stages of a tournament before. And with all the talk of an “easy” path back to Wembley for a possible semi-final and even the final, it’s too easy for confidence to get in the way of focus. Defender Harry Maguire qualified this with his comments last night: “We have won one knockout game, and not to concede in four games is impressive, but we need to win three more games. There are a lot of good teams left in the competition and we have to play at the level we are capable of.” That test is still to come. England have entered uncharted waters in so many ways.

Picture: Twitter/England