England prevail: the penalty curse is lifted

“Finally, at 11.52pm local time, the last kick of an epic night,” said Daniel Taylor in The Guardian. Eric Dier, England’s fifth penalty-taker, slotted his spot kick calmly to his left and was soon “submerged” by his teammates. “Here was the hard proof that England, contrary to the impression they might have given for much of the previous 30 years, did know how to win a penalty shoot-out.” This was their first knockout victory in a World Cup for 12 years, and their first ever World Cup shoot-out win. When Jordan Henderson’s penalty was saved, it looked as if England were headed down a familiar path. But in the end disaster was averted, because Colombia’s fourth effort hit the bar and their fifth was saved – ensuring Moscow 2018 will be remembered much more fondly than Turin 1990, Saint-etienne 1998 and Gelsenkirchen 2006.

“This type of game is character-forming,” said Paul Hayward in The Daily Telegraph. Did England play that well? It was hard to tell. But the match forced the team “to deal with frustration”, and with tactics that you don’t find in the coaching manual. They kept calm while their opponents manhandled, mauled and headbutted them, and tens of thousands of Colombians made Spartak Stadium feel “like Bogotá”. “We can all recite matches where England fell down the manhole of the unexpected.” But on this occasion, they “held their nerve”, even after Yerry Mina equalised in injury time. They dominated most of the field, defending “much better than many observers expected” – even if they didn’t show much quality in the final third. And they had clearly been well coached to cope with penalties. Gareth Southgate, “who has been through the wringer of such cruel deciders, never accepted that England were congenitally bound” to lose shoot-outs. “All it needed was a bit of research into what England were doing wrong, and some confidence in the ability of those firing the ball from the spot.” Southgate wanted them to “own the process”, and they did just that.

Harry Kane led by example again, said Jonathan Northcroft in The Times. Thanks to Colombian protests, he had to wait more than three minutes to take his second-half penalty, but he was as “unerring” as ever. It was “brilliantly fitting”, though, that Jordan Pickford should turn out to be the real hero, said Barney Ronay in The Guardian. This week, Belgium’s Thibaut Courtois suggested “that Pickford was a little short for a top-class goalkeeper”. In response, not only did he manage the “greatest save” of his career at the end of normal time, tipping Mateus Uribe’s screamer beyond the bar – a moment of glory sadly forgotten when Colombia equalised – but he also managed the decisive stop during the shoot-out. Pickford deserved his moment – one which leaves “England heading into the quarter-finals, and a date with Sweden, while feeling oddly light and free of baggage”.