England book Euros semi-final place with shootout win over Switzerland
Star Ap Meissner Scoring Against His Saka Bukayo Pic: Boy: Celebrates England's Photo/martin Side's Goal Switzerland
Five shots on target when it mattered. That’s what they’ll say, or at least what they can say. It was enough to make Gareth Southgate break into a dance.
The English disease of spot-kick agony has been cured by Southgate a couple of times over now. Other illnesses plague the manager and his team here but still they soldier on, into a Euro 2024 semi-final when they’d again been close to a wholly deserved exit, when a preposterous Xherdan Shaqiri olimpico attempt in extra-time crashed against Jordan Pickford's goal and almost sent them packing anyway.
Small, bizarre margins. But no, survive they did, Pickford saving a terrible first Swiss penalty from Manuel Akanji and every Englishman dispatching theirs. Among them Bukayo Saka, this game’s outstanding player, who buried some 2021 demons. Trent Alexander-Arnold scored the winner and sent the banks of English fans wild.
What of the wider 2021 demons now? The demons of 2006 and 1996 and every other damned year? They’ll hover over Dortmund but in a competitive field, England have established themselves as this Euros’ great survivors, worse than the sum of their parts, relying on wake-up calls and individual brilliance. It may yet be enough. It almost wasn’t.
The sun had had enough and had exited the stage still pouring in on the deep bank of Swiss red but no longer kissing the surface. We were somehow, suddenly in the 75th minute of a Saturday evening stroll in Dusseldorf’s suburbs and had just one shot on target to show for it all, a Breel Embolo tickler.
The online stat accounts were having fun with it all if the rest of us weren’t. England had had as many shots on target as Poland, the first team sent home, days, weeks, perhaps months ago. A knockout stage which has provided a couple of engrossingly brilliant matches with constipated contests such as this one either side was in desperate need of something.
Fabian Schar, as likely/unlikely as the 21 men not called Saka out there, found it. He cut inside Kieran Trippier, lamentably poor again, and snuck a ball down the left of the box to Dan Ndoye in explicably untracked by Jude Bellingham. He speared one across the box and John Stones could only take the heat off it for Embolo to handle Kyle Walker and bundle it home.
Southgate was 15 minutes away from somewhere he’d stared into for 70-odd minutes against Slovakia in the Last 16. Here, Saka would avert his manager’s gaze within five minutes. The game’s only daring player, dared once more and cut in from the right and dispatch a shot with strict instructions to find the inside of Yann Sommer’s post. Individual brilliance to the rescue of collective failure, again. English escape, again. Extra time, again. The escape was completed 30-odd minutes later.
The previous night had seen the Spanish, with some help from an English referee, put a pin in Germany’s Sommermärchen Mk.II. There would be no fairytale for the hosts but Spain didn’t come out unscathed, losing Pedri to injury and a scatter of starters to suspension. Later in the evening France and Portugal bludgeoned one another to toothless submission before Cristiano Ronaldo slow-dragged his country out of the tournament entirely.
There was a sense then that, even eight days out from the final, this remained a European Championship very much there to be grabbed, pulled emphatically in a direction. Never backwards in bellowing forwards, England fans loudly pondered as much on their way out to Dusseldorf Arena. Was there even a little excitement sprinkled in the talk of Southgate ‘changing it up’. Three at the back, Saka on the left, Phil Foden and Jude Bellingham as tandem tens.
Yet when the teams broke from their huddles, it was Kieran Tripper who hugged the left byline. In attack England looked a touch more like a back three but only in flashes. “It’s a great thing to have in the locker for us as a team if we need to go to that and play that system,” Southgate had said before half-opening the locker but putting a child-lock on it.
Within 11 minutes there were Bellingham, Trippier and Foden all crowding each other out in a tight triangle on the centre left. The other side was where the action was happening, the incision too. Saka gave Michel Aebischer a torrid time, especially when Foden hovered too. A 21st-minute corner met the head of Harry Kane but the captain met it peculiarly, sending it wide on a seal-with-a-beach-ball angle.
The Swiss were clipping some crisp passes towards Breel Embolo but not much was sticking, Dan Ndoye serving distant wafts of danger but no more. In the middle neither Declan Rice nor Granit Xhaka seemed in alpha mood.
On the half hour we got a first true sequence of half-electric movement as Saka, Foden, Bellingham and Kobbie Mainoo, again looking promising, blurred some Swiss eyes. It all forced Xhaka into conceding a corner as he tried to focus. Within 10 seconds the ball was shuttled all the way back to the feet of Jordan Pickford. One step forward, roughly 90 metres back.
Bellingham had one brief slalom, Saka tortured Aebischer some more but with Kane a ghostly presence, barely here at all as Manuel Akanji and marshalled well, the contest rarely rose above a kinda Saturday morning Fulham vs Brighton, in the background while you sort an omelette, affair. Of course there was gravity and tension out there, it just wasn’t being channeled into true ambition and certainly not risk.
What a peculiar thing, the three most talented squads coming in to this whole shindig were, by a most common consensus, England, France and Portugal. Yet over 14 and a half combined contests they have mostly stunk the place out. Verve, guile, a bit of bloody joy? None of the above.
The Swiss began to creep in a little more after the break and England began to creep in upon themselves, minutes now flying by until Embolo snuck past Walker and woke us all up, his fellow countrymen exploding in noise. Five minutes later, Southgate having immediately called for Luke Shaw, Cole Palmer and Eberechi Eze, the sea of limbs was pink and pasty English as Saka struck.
Embolo could have saved us all the extra half hour but took an injury time cross on to his head and off Ndoye’s as England survived. In five matches here against Serbia, Denmark, Slovenia, Slovakia and Switzerland, Southgate had found one victory within 90 minutes yet his side could see a Dortmund semi-final.
They were almost touching it until Sommer finger-tipped a dipping Rice drive around the post six minutes into extra-time. Legs were tiring. None more so than Bellingham and Rice, who both appeared eager to play a deep QB role the rest of the way. Palmer was doing enough running for both of them, menacing each time he got on the ball.
It was all so absorbing now because it had to be, reticence no longer an option. The clock dictated the urgency and weight of it all, lactic acid having its say too, the Swiss with eight players over 30 out there at one stage. One of them was Shaqiri, a late introduction who almost served up another iconic moment.
Having had the better players out there in every game here but made no use of it, Southgate now had a star-studded cast list from the spot. Would that count for enough? Palmer got them up and running, Pickford started his histrionics nice and early then saved a feeble Akanji attempt. Bellingham stutter-poked one and Schar responded. Saka for redemption? A scuffed form of redemption but he’d redeemed himself plenty by now.
We were humming now, everyone finding a flow. Shaqiri buried his, Toney followed suit and last-minute sub Zeki Amdouni held his nerve to leave the stage for Alexander-Arnold. Midfielder? Not for Gareth. Defender? Not for Gareth either, really. Matchwinner? Gareth will take that. He buried it and they ran as freely as they have for a month. Running to Dortmund and the Netherlands or Turkey. Stumbling and running on.
Pickford 7; Walker 5, Stones 6, Konsa 6 (Palmer 78), Trippier 5 (Eze 78); Mainoo 6 (Shaw 78), Rice 6, Saka 8; Bellingham 6, Foden 6 (Alexander-Arnold 115); Kane 5 (Toney 110).
Goals: Saka (80) Booked: Kane
: Sommer 7; Schär 7, Akanji 7, Rodriguez 7; Aebischer 5 (Amdouni 118), Freuler 6 (Sierro 118), Xhaka 6, Rieder 6 (Zuber 64); Vargas 7 (Widmer 64), Ndoye 7 (Zakaria 98), Embolo 7 (Shaqiri 110).
Goals: Embolo (75) Booked: Scharr, Widmer
Daniele Orsata (ITA) 7