The positives were 10,000 miles away, on the streets of London, Leeds and Manchester, where flags were strung from building to building. Around the parks and squares where people gathered knowing they might just be watching history makers.
This England team has given the nation something truly wonderful in recent weeks – not just a trip to the foothills of the top of the world, but players to fully invest in. Mary Earps, blowing out her cheeks, as exuberant and vibrant presence on a field as you will ever see. Alex Greenwood, the resolute Liverpool defender who seems to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders, even when she’s won. Lauren Hemp, the game-changer, was red-faced with the effort to push the team further.
But in this stadium on the other side of the world, Sunday night was a completely different story and – not for the first time in recent weeks – Lucy Bronze, mainstay and bastion of this team, was the emblem of how it all turned out.
When the England team had gathered and all was said and done, Bronze simply knelt on the turf, alone with her devastation. She was picked up by Rachel Daly, who has shared much of England’s journey with Bronze from valiant trials to serious contenders, then handed over to Sarina Wiegman, who stood beside Bronze as she waited to trudge for the medal she didn’t. really did. want to. Wiegman seemed to try to get Bronze to talk, but it ended. There were really no words for it.
Losing in a World Cup final is one thing. To do this when your performance is so far below the required level that you want to shut it out of your mind forever is another thing. That’s what Bronze wakes up to on Monday morning, along with the stone-cold realization that this may be her last shot at football’s ultimate prize.
Lucy Bronze collapsed after England’s 1-0 defeat to Spain in the World Cup final
Bronze can wake up with the realization that this may have been her last chance to win the World Cup
Olga Carmona’s winning goal came after Bronze lost the ball when she was out of position
Once upon a time, when the pool of international talent was shallower and the competition in the women’s game less fierce, Bronze might have gotten away with being knocked 40 yards out of position and only having the energy to jog back. Or simply don’t have the strength to drive away from the sea of red shirts. But this tournament has revealed the brutal consequences of being way off the pace, as Bronze and – it must be said – England really were.
The blunt and inconvenient truth is that Wiegman’s tactical plan didn’t work when the big moment arrived. She detailed her full-backs to operate high up the field to put pressure on Spain, but that left only usable space for a team fizzing passes through a flooded England midfield. What Sir Alex Ferguson once described as being stuck on an airport baggage carousel.
It was a challenge that, in hindsight, required the player who is on a different physical and technical level than anyone else in England, but by the time that player, Lauren James, appeared at the start of the second half, Spain had the game at the throat.
The Spaniards were the ones who decided the occasion deserved a call for their brightest star, Salma Paralluelo. You shivered as she raced to the English rear, revealing all the blistering speed that made her once the junior 400m record holder.
When Wiegman’s team played against the same country in the golden glow of the home European Championship a year ago, the English self-confidence brought them into a different world than this one.
“Maybe some teams need to let go of their egos a bit when they play against Spain,” Beth Mead said after the 2-1 win. “We were comfortable in our own strengths. We knew what we were good at.’
It was hard to find something England was comfortable with. They weren’t quite the anxious, hesitant team we saw against Nigeria in the last 16 two weeks ago, but they weren’t good enough. They were poor.
Their swings from memorable to mediocre and worse on this tournament have made them painfully difficult to judge, in a side of the draw that opened favorably for them. Australia were the only top-10 nation they played against in the semi-finals.
Sarina Wiegman’s tactical plan didn’t work with her team being exposed by Spain in the final
Spain’s extraordinary talents won the tournament despite their hated manager Jorge Vilda
They didn’t have two great talents in the final third, the injured Mead and Fran Kirby, and in the final draw, against the first strong team they played, the lack of a goal threat was painful to watch. The Spanish obsession with this sport fosters extraordinary talents, both men and women. It was clear. They won despite their pompous, self-righteous little manager Jorge Vilda, who was so disgusted that a quartet of Barcelona players refused to play.
The local population in this country will be very happy with the result today. Spain rules. Football is still not coming home,” the Australian newspaper crowed in Monday’s edition.
But a wider battle is being waged and slowly won within our own shores, despite the outcome. The girls in those London streets and Manchester parks will not take with them the tactical shortcomings of last weeks finals, but the memory of what the players represented to them.
Earps doesn’t leave these shores alone as the World Cup’s top goaltender, recipient of the tournament’s Golden Glove. She’s the person who spoke out to ask why Nike, which has been raking in profits from the kits and boots it sold during the tournament, has been so semi-detached that it doesn’t even have replicas of the shirt she’s wearing available suggested.
England’s silver medals could still help boost women’s football domestically
Millie Bright were runners-up to Australia’s Sam Kerr in the semi-final five days ago, but as soon as England fell behind through her struggles, she set up the goal to put them back ahead. It’s not just an English women’s team that girls and young women see reflected in, but a team that strives, fails, struggles in the arena and yet comes a long way, if not to the ultimate finish. Winning the World Cup would have given a huge boost to efforts to give girls the same chance to play football as boys.
But the silver medals, with which FIFA bizarrely forced the team to pose on the podium, could still boost the drive to give girls the same access to football as boys. That’s not easy. It is still proving difficult to convince high school headteachers to introduce football into the PE curriculum for girls.
Bronze had the look of a haunted player as she walked out of this stadium, though she’s not one of those who only stops to talk after a win. “We have shown resilience to keep going and continuing in the tournament,” she said. “I think we showed that, against the odds. We showed up.’
She may eventually reconcile herself to that fact, though in the here and now she seemed to have a brave face. Could she really be proud of a silver medal, she was asked. “No,” replied Brons. “I only like gold medals.”