And you may find yourself living in a place of songs and celebration. You may find yourself watching a team of cloudless, likable young people having the time of their lives, in a country that has felt for the last year like some vital element of joy has been lost, but which right now just wants to bask in the light and sing please, please, please don’t take me home.
You may find yourself watching England in a tournament final, led by a decent, admirable man who talk about values and fairness, who understands the value of the staggered defensive pivot, but who also looks as if he might be willing to show you how to make gingerbread or clear your guttering with a broom handle. And you may say to yourself – as would be entirely reasonable – well, how did we get here?
It is always tempting to assume that sport has some vital deeper meaning. But there are also moments when the things people do in sport become more than just noisy escapism, when it feels as if sport is trying to tell you something. At which, point, enter Gareth Southgate and this strange, happy new England.
There will no shortage of flag-waggling triumphalism before Sunday night and a difficult date with an excellent, wholehearted Italy team. But it is worth remembering that England’s progress to the final of Euro 2020 is in reality no more than a kind of levelling up.
This is not a sporting miracle or an underdog story. England has the wealthiest football league in the world. England has a population of 55 million and a powerful economy. It has one of the most vital, if desperately under-funded, amateur football cultures anywhere. England has the perfect ambient conditions for sporting success.
Yet before Wednesday night the England men’s team had reached one major final in the 70 years since first entering the World Cup – 70 years of making a fetish of failure, of writing tearful paeans to failure, of becoming much more efficient at failing beautifully than actually doing something about those obstacles to success.
England at the Euros isn’t some kind of grail quest, a triumph of Albion over the fates. It is instead a case of blockages being shifted and cobwebs swept away. For all football’s hot air, its schmaltz, its extra cheese, this England team do seem to offer a model of something, of leadership, of merit rewarded, of finding ways to let go of the past. So. How did we get here anyway?
Looking back it is easy to make a case that every one of England’s games at this surprisingly full-throttle European Championship has provided a study of some vital quality of the Age of Gareth. England’s first opponents were also their last meaningful ones at Russia 2018 where an outgunned midfield was overrun by players of greater craft in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium. But Croatia were never really a bogey team or a nemesis. This was always about what England had done wrong, about study and revision, acknowledging weakness, qualities that have so often been lost in the rage and solipsism of defeat.
Mainly this was Raheem Sterling’s game. It is easy to forget now that there was a degree of mild fury at Sterling’s selection, a senior player who on recent club form arguably didn’t merit a place in the team. And as ever with Sterling, and more widely with England, it felt as if there was something else here too, strange noises off.
Before the game Boris Johnson had called, with a wink, for people to refrain from booing the players’ pre-match anti-racism gesture, having previously, with another wink, defended the right to jeer. Dog whistle politics in sport. Race-baiting through signs and words and sneers. Sterling knows a fair bit about this.
Five years ago, at the last Euros, he was assailed by tabloid newspapers, characterised as weak, disloyal and fatally flash using the racially loaded language of “bling” and all the rest. Sterling called this out himself. It was a remarkable moment of resistance, of refusing to be victimised, and instead holding up a mirror.
Perhaps this is simply one of those sporting illusions, but Croatia was a moment where these tides seemed to come together. Sterling led the attack, scored the only goal, and has gone on to march through this tournament, a fearless, uplifting figure. This is only football. Sterling doesn’t have to take on this responsibility. He isn’t a warrior, or a politician, or an embodiment of anything outside of his sport. But then, well, he kind of is.
Five days later the low arrived. England were sluggish against Scotland. A goalless draw provided a moment of crisis. There were calls for change, for Southgate, a tactical roundhead, to doubt his judgment, to throw the pieces in the air and let loose the dogs of Gareth.
England have always tended to conduct these sporting inquests in a vacuum. What matters here is what England do, what England think, the conversations England have with themselves. But somebody else is also in this room, and Scotland played very well at Wembley. Knowing your limits. Sticking to the plan. Resisting the populist cry. This is Southgate’s super-strength. A weaker leader might have caved to passing opinion. Southgate had the courage to be mild.
England held steady, and against the Czech Republic Bukayo Saka was in the team ahead of the popular hero Jack Grealish. Saka is 20. He has little high-level football behind him. But he was man of the match as England beat the Czechs. And here is another tenet of Southgate-ism: talent will be rewarded. Age and background are no barrier. Southgate may be the gatekeeper to this England team. But that gate is always open.
And so on to Germany and the knockout rounds, where so much came together. To win with England in a game such as this is to defeat first the ghosts, the noises through the wall, the shadow against the door. England were controlled against Germany. Grealish emerged at the perfect moment and helped turn the game. A 2-0 win was celebrated warmly but without any anger. At the end Southgate gave a quietly moving TV interview where he talked about letting go and making peace with his own pain over Germany games past. You could almost hear the chains clanking off, the weight being lifted. Another note in the creed of Gareth: the past is past.
England decamped to Rome and the quarter‑final against Ukraine, who might have been difficult opponents, but were swept aside. This was England’s grace note, a performance of attacking freedom, and a moment of sporting resurrection for the captain, Harry Kane, who had to that point seemed to be wading through a peat bog in a set of gravity boots.
And so on to Denmark, back at Wembley, and the unaccustomed trauma of an extra-time semi-final victory. The lasting imprint of that night will be the public reaction, an overflow of joy and release, the sense of people blinking in the light and drawn, whatever their starting position, to this agreeable young team.
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From here England have one more step. Southgate has talked about his players having the chance to create moments that live on, that have their own life in the popular culture. For now they will see only a game to be won.
It will be draining, bruising and also entirely new, virgin territory not just for this light and airy England team but for the rest of us, too. Mainly it will be fun, an act of love just to watch that team play again, with its seductive notes of leadership and collectivism; and even, whisper it, an infectious little gloss of hope.