sport news ROB DRAPER: England's defeat against France was a cruel way to exit the World ... trends now
There are ways no good ways to lose a World Cup quarter-final. There are just varying degrees of desolation. And yet there are particularly cruel exits, the kind that echo down the decades as potential moments in time when, but for this or that, glorious events might have unfolded. England have plenty of those in their history. Now they have another.
What might Qatar 2022 have been for a superbly talented group of players who looked to be coming into their prime and growing with confidence with every step? Might they have navigated a semi final against Morocco to reach a first World Cup final since 1966?
They are agonising questions that will be debated ten years hence and never fully answered. They are as painful as the hope that soared in that last moment when the net fluttered from Marcus Rashford’s free kick, what we all knew to be the last kick of the game. For a millisecond, a thousand hearts also fluttered with that net. But the reality was the shot was over, the top of the net had been disturbed but not the goalkeeper.
Harry Kane missed a late penalty as England exited the World Cup at the hands of France
Marcus Rashford also missed the target by inches with a free-kick in added time
So for now, we must dwell on the bitter irony that England are flying home and that Gareth Southgate may well have served his time as England manager because Harry Kane missed a penalty that would have broken Wayne Rooney’s goal-scoring record. Southgate knows that kind of pain, imparting comforting words as he embraced his captain at the end.
That moment in time came on 82 minutes, when after a length VAR review, Kane stepped up for his second penalty of the night. It was surely the least likely scenario England would have anticipated as a potential heartbreaker. Earlier in the week Southgate has said that there’s no-one in the world he would prefer in that situation. That remains true today, even after Kane sent his penalty high over the bar.
It was the moment that drained the hope and the prospect of glory from England. There was still of course time to play. There was Marcus Rashford and Jack Grealish to come on. And there were hopeful crosses. But until Rashford’s free kick, there wasn’t much. And anyone with a passing knowledge of football knows that such turning points are decisive in World Cup quarter finals. And here was one the sucked the air from England’s lungs.
There were bitter twist throughout this game, however. It was as though the French were mocking us. After all the Kylian Mbappe talk, all the fears of French flair and technique, in the end it was a good old-fashioned cross and a near-post header from an old friend of the Premier League, Olivier Giroud, that was to be England’s downfall. It was a goal made in England, the kind you will see at Accrington Stanley on a cold dark afternoon in Lancashire. We just weren’t expecting it on the edge if the
