World Cup 2018: Four ways England proved everyone wrong by reaching the semi-finals in Russia

At a time when the team had alienated millions, Gareth Southgate's side has managed to reconnect

England are out of the World Cup but they have transformed the image and standing of the national team during their four-week campaign in Russia. They are the first England team to overachieve in living memory and have transformed the national feeling around the side.

In doing so, England have proven four important points about themselves and the broader context, four things that would have come as a surprise to many people going into the tournament this summer.

English players and coaches

So many English tournament defeats end with serious soul-searching about the state of our football. And a fear that there is something fundamentally wrong with English football, from our young players we produce all the way up to our managers.

This tournament was the first reassertion of a new English football identity, one that trusted English footballers to play in a new way, but one delivered by an English coach.

Seeing unglamorous English players playing like this, all the way through to the World Cup semi-finals, could encourage Premier League teams to trust their youngsters rather than always buying from abroad. Speaking in the early hours of Thursday morning in the Luzhniki, Southgate said he hoped clubs would start to recognise what English players can do.

“They [clubs] should have belief in some of the guys who have come in, not from nowhere, but they have not had five or six years at top clubs,” Southgate said. “They have had very quick journeys, the likes of Harry Maguire, Jordan Pickford and Kieran Trippier. So I think we have got good young players coming through our academies. And by performing on the biggest stages as they have, should give people belief in what they are doing.”

And Southgate himself is crucial too. Because it has been a difficult time for English coaches recently, especially with England twice choosing a foreign manager, Sven Goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello, as an attempt to drag the team into line with the rest of the world. Looking back, those two appointments only exacerbated the identity-crisis around the national team. But this summer Southgate feels as if he has proved a point about what English coaches can do.

“We felt it was the chance to showcase what young English players can do, and also we hoped that we could strike a blow for English coaches as well,” Southgate said. “Because it’s not always been possible for English coaches to have this job. And that’s why it is an honour to do it, and to play in a way, and get to a stage of a tournament that will hopefully inspire young coaches as well. I know the messages I have had from back home has helped them see what’s possible.”

Reconnection with the fans

Remember when even some of England’s best players, Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole, would get booed at Wembley? Or when Steve McClaren was met at games with chants of “sack the t***”?

For years there has been a gradual disconnection between the England team and the public. Even though Wembley would regularly sell out for home games there, the sense of love between the fans and team had eroded away, especially after the repeated tournament failures of the Roy Hodgson era. It felt as if the power of the Premier League meant that fans would always identify more now with their club sides, who offer 24/7 engagement, rather than the occasional coming-togethers of the national side.

But this summer blew all of that conventional wisdom away. This England team’s games sparked unprecedented scenes at home, of mass street parties for games, as the public re-connected with a team whose modesty, youth and humility made them the perfect antidote to the unpopular ‘Golden Generation’. The England squad, tucked away in Repino, could see clips of what was going on at home almost as soon as they happened, and were inspired by what they saw.

(EPA)

Southgate explained the power of the players realising the public are now behind them, and the whole experience is more fun than it ever has been before. “The desire and hunger of the players will be there to do it,” he said. It's great for them, they may have had a feeling that playing for England was always misery and regret and recrimination. Now I think they've seen that it can be enjoyable; the whole experience can be enjoyable for everybody.”

England can be confident, rather than scared

Positivity has been at the heart of Gareth Southgate’s England. He knows better than anyone how damaging negativity and fear can be to an England side. Not just from his own playing career but also from witnessing the last few tournaments, and especially the melt-down against Iceland in Nice two years ago.

Southgate has always wanted to change that. He wants England players to be as good as they possibly can be. When Harry Maguire made his England debut against Lithuania last year, he told Southgate afterwards he was pleased not to have made any mistakes. Southgate told him to focus on how good he could be instead.

(Getty Images)

England have taken that mentality into this World Cup and Southgate believes that has been central to everything they have achieved. “I think they've had a view of what is possible,” he said, drawing a contrast to Euro ‘96 and France ‘98. “They were my experiences of my first couple of tournaments with England. It was difficult to watch guys avoiding mistakes for a long period. Whereas for the majority of this tournament we've tried to be as good as we can be, and be brave. Mistakes were always going to happen but to be brave you've got to play in that style.”

The fact that England went into a tournament without fear of failure was evident on the pitch. They played as if freed from the burdens of history - another priority of Southgate’s - and when they eventually went out, there was no great calamity. They just lost to a better team.

The England side are moving in the right direction again

It has felt for years as if the England team was in slow retreat ever since the exciting early years of the Sven Goran Eriksson era. Even when Hodgson tried to integrate young players for Euro 2016, results only got worse. But this was the first summer for years when it felt as if England were moving in the right direction again.

Whether this was England’s best ever chance to win a World Cup will be debated for years, and who knows what will happen at Euro 2020. But the feeling is that England have to keep moving forward. Southgate raised the comparison with Germany, whose young team lost the World Cup semis in 2010 before winning the competition in 2014.

“This is either a moment of rare hope and we sink bank, or we build in the way that Germany did in 2010,” Southgate said. “We want to be in semi-finals, finals and we’ve shown to ourselves that can happen. The team and the individuals will be better in a couple of years’ time. Some of these big matches, you just have to go through them and live them to know how to react in the right moments in the right way.”

Harry Kane was just as optimistic. “This has got to be the start of something rather than the end of it,” he said. “When you look at our squad, how young it is and the fact the manager has only been in charge for two years, it is massive that we have had a good tournament, restored the pride of the nation, the fans are excited to watch us again and that is how we have to keep it. The way to do that is to carry on progressing and know we will get better. We just have to learn from nights like this.”