Gavin Cooney reports from Arena AufSchalke, Gelsenkirchen

IVAN TONEY IS trotting onto the field to replace Phil Foden in the very last minute because Gareth Southgate has to do something just anything but the boos that are roused you just know are the preamble to the great avalanche of humiliating fury that gets all England managers in the end because England have been abysmal wretched embarrassing here a total shapeless mess and are heading out of the Euros without even a shot on target against Slovakia and let’s see them chuck this throw-in and be done withitandOHMYGOD JUDE BELLINGHAM WHAT HAVE! YOU! JUST! DONE! 

For the country which can be said to have introduced comic-book acts of outlandish individualism to the game, Bellingham’s means of saving England’s Euro 2024 was the kind of stuff to keep Roy of the Rovers alive for Gen Z.

A 95th-minute overhead kick to send the game to extra-time. Jude, man, are you serious here? 

“Who else!? Who else!?”, roared Bellingham in his celebrations. 

Has anything so brazenly breathtaking ever redeemed something so obnoxiously bad? 

England are through to the quarter-finals to play Switzerland but they cannot keep getting away with performances this bad. For 95 minutes of this game they were cowed and anxious and misshapen and just brutally poor, and after Bellingham then shoved the game to extra-time and Harry Kane headed England in front within seconds of the restart with Slovakia still reeling, England returned to their prior state, dropping off to cling on against opposition with nothing more to give. 

But they surely can’t keep getting away with this. Right? 

Because Gareth Southgate has been exposed at these Euros not as a man with a plan, but as a man in a queue. He has spent the tournament just…waiting. 

Waiting for Luke Shaw; Waiting For it All to Click; Waiting To Make Changes; Waiting for the real Kane, the real Bellingham, the real Foden. 

Southgate may in fact be the greatest gambler in English football: he’s standing motionless and playing Russian Roulette against what would be one of England’s greatest major tournament debacles in recent memory.

And yet Southgate has come up trumps once again. Waiting for Jude, as it turns out, is a solid plan.

But it is surely unsustainable against the better sides at this tournament. Slovakia scored midway through the first-half and pretty much renounced the idea of playing any more football from that point on. Had they remained brave – and in midfielder Stanislav Lobotka they had the quality to keep on playing if they wished – they might have won the game by preying on England’s flimsy defence. 

Instead they sat off and had to ride their luck – Phil Foden encapsulated his side’s anxiety in being ahead of Kieran Trippier in tapping in a goal ruled out for offside, while Harry Kane missed the kind of point-blank header he may not miss for another year – and were ultimately shattered by Bellingham’s virtuoso intervention. 

Slovakia will take a long, long time to lose their sickness over this result because England were dreadful.

Southgate reacted to the zestless auguries of the group phase by not really reacting at all.  Yes Conor Gallagher became the latest have-a-go-midfielder to be quickly ejected, replaced by Kobbie Mainoo, but otherwise, England stuck with their non-plan of the group phase. 

And it led to a non-performance which then became an epic, omni-collapse until Bellingham somehow pieced it all back together again. 

The hitherto stingy England defence melted under meagre pressure to fall behind, Marc Guehi and John Stones getting in a muddle and then given no reprieve when an idling Kyle Walker stood still to play goalscorer Ivan Schranz onside. 

Asked to take the initiative, England got stage-fright. They showed a complete inability to progress the ball through midfield, with Declan Rice curiously vanishing from view. As Stones, Guehi, and Jordan Pickford knocked the ball to each other with no particular place to go, the jeers swelled among the travelling England fans. 

There was little redemption anywhere else. Mainoo was bright but his efforts to link play were frustrated by England’s lack of structure, with Foden isolated on the left and Kane again anonymous. Bukayo Saka looked the greatest threat but he was isolated anytime he did beat his man, while Bellingham faded from a promising start, throwing himself to the ground lamely more than once in an effort to win a cheap free-kick from a generous referee. 

Slovakia were the first to make changes, as Southgate stood still on the sideline, playing the waiting game of which he was the only faithful follower. England fans contorted themselves in angst and frustration, screaming for changes or at least just to Get It Bloody Launched. 

Cole Palmer came on for Trippier just after the hour mark with Saka retooled as the left-back, at which point England finally began to sustain pressure in the Slovak half. But it didn’t lead to any chances and they didn’t have a single shot on target until Bellingham found one in the pages of absurd comic-book fantasy. 

Gareth Southgate with supporters. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

You got the sense the sheer psychological release of Bellingham’s goal and Kane’s swift encore might be enough to finally free England of their stultifying anxiety, but no: they clung on in extra-time and Eberechi Eze made a stunning back-post intervention to stop Slovakia from levelling the tie again in the first-half of extra-time. 

England ultimately saw it out and Southgate lives to wait his way through another day. 

His problem will arise when England meet an opponent capable of reaching out and grabbing victory for themselves.