Brian Reade: Regardless of how World Cup 2018 ends, England's future looks so bright they surely CANNOT mess it up
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Just a reminder of what was going on in football the year England last won a knockout game at a major tournament:
Wembley was still a building site so we had the pleasure of up-grading to Cardiff for cup finals, Glenn Hoddle resigned as Wolves boss, giving him the chance to downgrade the quality of TV punditry and Middlesbrough reached the heady heights of the UEFA Cup final ensuring Steve McClaren got his teeth whitened in anticipation of all the smiling he’d be doing as England manager.
That was 2006, or roughly half a football-watching lifetime ago to a 32-year-old.
And England lost the next game, just as they had done the previous time they reached the quarter-finals.
So as excited as the nation is getting over Gareth Southgate’s team and their supposedly heaven-sent route to next weekend's World Cup final, perspective is still very much needed. Even if they have now beaten the penalty hoodoo.
(Image: EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
It’s beyond foolish to look at the potential fixtures and convince yourself they are formalities. If in doubt, take a look at that World Cup wall-chart you filled in three weeks ago and ask what happened to Germany, France, Argentina and Portugal?
For starters, Sweden are no pushovers.
In their qualifying group, they beat France and finished above Holland, before keeping Italy goalless for 180 minutes in the play-offs to reach Russia, where they’ve hammered Mexico 3-0 and just seen off the world’s sixth-seeded side, Switzerland.
But were England to get past the Swedes, they will reach a World Cup semi-final for the first time since 1990, when fans stood on terraces, English clubs were banned from Europe and the Premier League was not even a wet dream shared by Rupert Murdoch, Greg Dyke and the owners of the top four clubs.
(Image: Getty)
That would be some achievement for the youngest squad left in the tournament, who few believed would make it past the quarter-finals. Even the deepest pessimist would admit things are looking up.
But let’s not forget how, after 1990, the fortunes of English club football soared, but the national side’s flatlined then slumped.
Bobby Robson was allowed to step down as coach, as was the next, and last manager, to take them to a tournament semi-finals, Terry Venables.
The rest is misery.
That cannot, and surely will not, happen to Gareth Southgate, even if England lose on Saturday and his head is turned into a root vegetable under the headline Swedes 2, Turnips 1 – The Sequel.
Because the foundations are in place for England to finally progress like a mature footballing nation.
In Russia, the intelligence and honesty of Southgate has shone through, as has the players’ humility.
For once, the capabilities of the national side are in sync with the nation’s expectations.
Optimism based around a young, talented group devoid of ego and bluster, balanced with the acceptance that only Harry Kane is the only one of them with a shout of making a squad of the world’s best players.
Whatever happens now, we know England are in a good place.
We knew that anyway, after last year’s World Cup triumphs for the Under-20s and U17s and the Euros win for the U19s.
It’s impossible to fluke being the best at three age groups.
(Image: FIFA via Getty)
(Image: EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
To then see seniors exhibit, as they did against Colombia, the mental strength not to succumb to the dark arts, to fight back from an extra-time equaliser and to go where no group of Englishmen have previously gone in a World Cup, by winning a tense penalty shoot-out, means they are getting things right.
That the work going on at St George’s Park is bearing fruit.
And Greg Dyke’s much-mocked claim that England can win the World Cup in 2022 now doesn’t seem so risible.
Indeed, the fact that bookies have them joint second-favourites to lift it next Sunday puts them way ahead of schedule.