Whether “football’s coming home” is as unpredictable as ever. But in England, watching this weekend as its men’s national soccer team comes within touching distance of glory, the dreaming and dreading seem less anguished this time around.
Three years ago, in the deadly grip of the coronavirus pandemic and the acrid wake of Brexit, England suffered a heartbreaking loss to Italy, on penalty kicks, in the final of the European championships in London.
England’s run through that Covid-delayed tournament had lifted a country that badly needed it. The team’s unofficial anthem, “Three Lions,” swelled in pubs and living rooms across the country, offering the hope, however far-fetched, that after five decades of tournament disappointments and 14 months of lockdowns, “football’s coming home,” as the lyrics of the song go.
Home looks very different this year.
As England prepares to play Spain in the final in Berlin on Sunday, there’s a sense of a country turning the page, on the field and off. Last week, the Labour Party swept out a Conservative Party that had been in government for 14 years, leaving a professed soccer fan, Keir Starmer, as prime minister, and raising a tantalizing historical precedent.
The last time England won a major international championship, the World Cup in 1966, it came four months after the Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Harold Wilson, had scored a landslide victory over the Conservatives. The 58 years since then have been a sad litany of missed chances and unfulfilled promise — or as the song pitilessly puts it, “England’s gonna throw it away, gonna blow it way.”
Mr. Starmer has pointed out that England has yet to blow a game under this Labour government — a slender achievement, given that it has played only twice since the July 4 election: a nail-biter over Switzerland on penalty kicks in the quarterfinals, and a narrow 2-1 victory over the Netherlands in the semifinals.
“It’s all because of the prime minister,” said President Biden, as he welcomed Mr. Starmer to the Oval Office for a NATO summit last week.
When a reporter asked Mr. Starmer, “Is football coming home, prime minister?” he answered with lawyerly caution, “It looks like it.”
As a student of the game, Mr. Starmer knows caution is warranted. Spain looks formidable, and England’s route to the final was a stutter-step affair, with sluggish play in the early rounds that left fans fed up with the manager, Gareth Southgate, and impatient with some star players. After an uninspiring draw against Slovenia, fans threw empty beer cups at Southgate.
Some likened him to Mr. Starmer, who ran a hyper-cautious campaign before the election. Offering a grudging endorsement of the Labour leader, The Sun, a right-wing British tabloid, declared it was “time for a new manager.” The paper added that it was talking about politics, not soccer, but the implication was clear.
By Saturday, The Sun had changed its tune. “England can do it!” it said, citing Sven-Goran Eriksson, a Swedish coach who once managed the team.
Another tabloid, The Daily Express, went further, calling for Southgate to be knighted. “Win or lose, arise Sir Gareth,” the paper said. “But please win!”
What changed was the turnaround in the last three games: star midfielder Jude Bellingham’s dramatic bicycle-kick goal saving the game against Slovakia in the last seconds of added time; England’s coldblooded dispatch of a strong Swiss team in penalty kicks; and a sublime winning goal by the striker Ollie Watkins, sent on by Southgate as a substitute for the struggling captain, Harry Kane.
Each of those moments qualified as redemption of a sort. Bellingham’s shot supplied the missing heroics. Watkins’s goal vindicated Southgate’s approach to substitutions. And the penalty shootout against Switzerland eased the memory of three missed penalty kicks in 2021, which sealed England’s defeat to Italy.
The heartbreak of that loss was followed by an ugly outburst of racism on social media against the players who had missed, who were Black. That blighted the joy England had taken in a multiracial team that reflected the diversity of the country, and it served as a reminder of the malicious currents that have long flowed in European soccer.
One of those players, the Arsenal winger Bukayo Saka, is on the current team. This time, he coolly drilled his penalty kick, in addition to scoring earlier in the game. In case anyone missed the symbolism, three other Black players — Bellingham, Ivan Toney and Trent Alexander-Arnold — also scored.
“Where are the racists now????” Rio Ferdinand, a former star of the England team and a sports commentator, who is of Afro-Caribbean and Irish heritage, posted on social media. “Probably still celebrating!!!!”
In this respect as well, the mood has changed off the field. In 2021, the England team got caught up in the politics of the post-George Floyd period. When its players took a knee before the opening whistle to protest racism, some Conservative politicians criticized them for virtue signaling.
Priti Patel, a former home secretary whose name has surfaced as a future Tory leader, refused to condemn crowds for booing them. Lee Anderson, a defector from the Conservative Party who held on to his seat in Parliament running for an anti-immigrant party, Reform U.K., vowed not to watch the team.
Southgate published a “Dear England” letter, in which he defended his socially minded players. “We are heading for a much more tolerant and understanding society, and I know our lads will be a big part of that,” he wrote. The team’s struggles were later dramatized in a hit play, “Dear England.”
The Labour government shows little interest in politicizing soccer, at least not in a negative way. Asked what advice he had for the team this time around, Mr. Starmer replied with one word: “Win.”
It fell to King Charles III to invoke the heart-rending history of English soccer. In a message after its victory over the Netherlands, Charles wished the team success in Berlin. He added, “If I may encourage you to secure victory before the need for any last minute wonder-goals or another penalties drama, I am sure the stresses on the nation’s collective heart rate and blood pressure would be greatly alleviated!”
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