England did not expect. That was the key to this summer’s World Cup. Last night’s defeat by Croatia was a gut-wrenching disappointment. Yet four weeks ago, any England fan told that the World Cup run would end in extra-time in the semi-finals would have jumped at the prospect.
On and off the pitch, it has been a summer that has changed how we think about England. Is football just sport? Yes. But sport can do things that nothing else can. Nations are imagined communities of millions where we share something with people we do not know. There are few other things than sport that thirty million of us can share that captures such an idea so powerfully.
England embraced Gareth Southgate as a national leader because he told us things about ourselves that we needed to hear in 2018.
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