Gavin Cooney reports from Dusseldorf

TO LOOK AT Gareth Southgate waggling his arms and dancing to Freed From Desire in front of the England fans after another afternoon of grim endurance was to be bewildered for more than the one obvious reason. 

Was it really only 10 days ago the same England fans were furiously hurling beer cups his way? 

But Southgate has continued to do at this tournament what he has done since his parachute appointment: break new ground with England while convincing very few people he’s actually any good at what he’s doing. Figure that one out. 

Southgate has now led England to the semi-finals at three of the four tournaments of which he’s been in charge. This was England’s eighth knockout tournament win of his tenure: all of the England managers in the 50 years before him managed six between them. Hell, Southgate has even managed to figure out penalty shootouts. Including today’s game, England have been involved in 12 penalty shootouts since 1990. They’ve won four of them, and Southgate has been in charge for half of them. 

And with either Turkiye or the Netherlands ahead in the semi-final next Wednesday, the path to Berlin is looking wider and more smooth with every passing moment. And with a misfiring France or a potentially weary Spain awaiting in the final, England might win this thing without even playing well. 

Because they are not playing well. This was another stoggy, dreary performance in which some of the world’s best players conspired to make playing football look like one of the world’s most difficult tasks. At one point in the first half, England arranged themselves for a short corner and worked it all back to their own goalkeeper. What is happening here? 

Southgate has said his ambition as England manager was to make the country fall back in love with its team and, certainly, this England team are better loved than understood. 

Because they can’t be understood. England are a collective that smother their individual talents and refuse to attack until they are behind, at which point the individuals are given licence to shine and tear apart the collective if they must. The catch: they can only do so until England are no longer losing. Once a game is level, then everyone must renew their vows with the stultifying collective. 

And it was the case again.

The pre-game rumours that Southgate would shift to a back three proved true, albeit not quite in the way that was envisaged. Yes, England would play with wing-backs, but Kieran Trippier would still be awkwardly marooned out on the left, with Bukayo Saka instead playing on the right side.

This was a crude means of introducing some width to England’s left flank as, at wing-back, Trippier could simply stand higher up the pitch. Sure, he didn’t do anything, but doing nothing further up the pitch could at least create a bit of space for Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden. 

But it would have been a monumental blunder to move Saka from the right, for he was England’s only bright spark in another wan first-half display. The men on the BBC were apparently blown away with England’s first-half performance, for which they earned the rancour of the Very Online.

But anyone who had sat through England’s games to date would have been encouraged by their start, as it was less sulphurous than what they have served up to now. They kept the ball a bit better and Saka twisted and tortured Michel Aebischer, who to now was a contender for the team of the tournament. Sure, England didn’t actually create anything, but there was a pair of them in it. Neither side managed a shot on target until the 51st minute. That honour went to Breel Embolo, who dribbled a shot into Jordan Pickford’s grateful arms. 

At this point, England had relapsed into all of their bad habits. They dropped deep and stopped playing until Switzerland did them a favour by going in front, Embolo forcing the ball in at the back post after England were carved open down their much-ignored left side. 

At which point Southgate gave the signal: Time To Have A Go, Boys.

Luke Shaw, Cole Palmer, and Eberechi Eze were bundled onto the field but it was Saka who popped up to be England’s hero, cutting inside and whipping a sumptuous shot in off the post from outside the box. While the goal came earlier than Bellingham’s against Slovakia, there were parallels: once again England had scored with their very first shot on target. 

England’s team was now ludicrously imbalanced. Who knew it was possible to have all of Bellingham, Eze, Saka, Foden, Palmer, and Kane on the pitch at the same time? But once extra-time began, that individual potential was once again lost beneath their bizarre determination to do Just Enough, as England sat off and invited pressure. They could have easily lost the game in the final 15 minutes, with Xherdan Shaqiri almost condemning England to another couple of years of national humiliation by hitting the crossbar directly from a corner. 

Any England side eagerly welcoming a penalty shootout seems perverse, but Southgate’s team are perfectly geared for it. A chance to settle a game based off five individual interventions? They’ve been winning games to this point with fewer than that. 

And so England’s penalties were all superb, with Trent Alexander-Arnold earning the prize for the decisive spot kick thanks to Jordan Pickford’s opening save from Manuel Akanji. 

We are past the point of waiting for England to suddenly click and start playing well enough to win this tournament.

England will never play as well as the world feels they ought to, but they may not need to do so to win a European Championship that everyone is still trying to figure out is actually any good. On that basis, it’s a competition made for Gareth Southgate’s England.