Dancing in the dark indeed. How perfectly apt. Onwards England go.
South to Dusseldorf next and wherever else the soft side of the draw can take them. Never mind that for 94 minutes here they had all of the firmness of a wet sock themselves. The soft side is their side and, with Jude Bellingham having hauled them out of the darkness, they’re ready to dance again.
..apparently.
What a world. As their fans made the slow, churning way up to Gelsenkirchen’s leafy, post-industrial wastelands Sunday lunchtime the soundtrack was only positive. Given how they’d got here — by stinking up what’ll prove to be the tournament’s softest group — their outlook was admirable.
They didn’t reach for their classics though, a new favourite dominating the airwaves. To the air of Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 banger, they sang about not starting a fire without a spark, replacing the next line with “Phil Foden’s on fire. He’ll be playing the Germans off the park.
” That Foden, like all of Southgate’s leading lights, had mostly been playing himself off the park for the first two weeks here didn’t matter. It was the opening weekend of Euro 2024’s knockout stages and England had only Slovakia to beat to finally get going. Sixty seconds away from going home and with this place mostly silent, Bellingham produced the spark, a spectacular one so out of keeping with all that had preceded it your brain took a while to adjust to what the eyes had seen.
Bewitching beauty where only hap.
