Hope and Fear in England’s World Cup Journey

By the time Enzo Fernández’s shot ripped through the night and through English hearts, the argument was already lost. Not on tactics, or substitutions, or shape. On hope.

Rebecca Solnit once wrote about hope as a radical act, a necessary engine for change. Maria Popova sharpened it: “Critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naivety.” Both would have found plenty of material in England’s collapse against Argentina.

Because for all the talk of pressing structures and back fives morphing into back sixes, this was a night about the most debilitating emotion in sport. Not fear. Not anger. Hope.

The long walk to belief

It never starts as hope. Not for England. Not in a knockout match with history sitting heavy on the shoulders and Jordan Pickford waiting for that first back-pass.

In the buildup, it’s fear that owns you. Fear during the countdown that nobody needs but television insists on. Fear when the ball rolls to Pickford and you suddenly remember how fragile everything is. You can feel your pulse climbing, a drumbeat in your throat.

The game settles, but the nerves don’t. They just change shape. Base-level anxiety, spiked with little eruptions of rage as Giuliano Simeone careers around the pitch like a man auditioning for a different sport. He harries, he hacks, he kicks, he growls. Where is the yellow card? Is there something in this? Are the conspiracists, the ones you mock, actually on to something?

By now, even the cleanest Argentine tackle feels sinister. Every English foul, on the other hand, becomes righteous. Necessary. Another pint of myopia, please.

Half-time arrives and with it the first proper wave of pessimism. You know this script. The longer it goes, the more likely Argentina will find a way. They usually do. You mutter nonsense about “muscle memory” and then more honest assessments about “wily bastards”. You’ve watched enough of this sport, and enough of this team, to know how it tends to end.

When the goal changes everything

And then, abruptly, it doesn’t. The cross is perfect, the finish even better. Net bulges, stadium erupts, and for a second it feels like the axis of the world shifts.

It’s not just joy. It’s relief, a pressure valve blown open. It’s possibility. That first real jolt of hope arrives, wrapped in the familiar England fan’s caveat: “Well, at least they need two now.” You know how fragile the lead is, but you cling to the maths.

The other pure high comes not from a goal, but from a tackle. Djed Spence, gliding through the match as if he’s dropped in from a different, calmer universe, suddenly explodes into the kind of challenge defenders dream about and forwards dread. Perfect timing, perfect aggression, perfect statement.

The celebration is feral, Chiellini-and-Bonucci stuff. A roar, a snarl, a chest-thump. “Yes, Djed!” It feels like the greatest England tackle since Eric Dier went through Sergio Ramos, only this one carries more weight. In another version of this night, that’s the clip that opens every montage. That’s the still image cast in bronze.

For a fleeting spell, you can see the future. England in a World Cup final. The country on pause. New York humming with preview shows and late-night debates. Columns about hope, but the good kind this time.

The retreat and the reckoning

The tactical retreat had started before the hydration break. Lines dropping. Wingers tracking. A back five looking suspiciously like a back six. You could see it, feel it, almost taste the anxiety seeping from the technical area to the pitch.

How many people, in living rooms and bars and fan zones, said the same thing at roughly the same time: “It’s too soon to defend this”? It made sense in 1986, with 10 men at altitude in the Azteca. It feels less justifiable now, yet here we are again, trying to survive rather than impose.

The chances to kill it come and go. Each missed opportunity, each Argentine attack repelled, feeds the same dangerous beast. Hope creeps in. Slowly at first, then with a rush.

In the 82nd minute, Nico O’Reilly blocks a pass, chases it, blocks again. England are in Argentina’s half, which by now feels like a foreign country. Eight seconds shaved off the clock. Eight seconds closer to something extraordinary.

A minute later Lionel Messi, of all people, floats a cross harmlessly behind for a goal-kick. That’s the moment the thought forms properly: maybe. Just maybe.

Now you’re not just watching a game. You’re planning days, imagining headlines, building narratives. England in a World Cup final. Adam Wharton as the future. A team on the brink of rewriting its own story.

Two minutes and 55 seconds

“Eighty-four minutes on the clock now,” Guy Mowbray notes as Pickford launches a goal-kick and O’Reilly fights for the scraps. Alan Shearer admits he keeps staring at the numbers, willing them to move faster.

They don’t.

At 84:24, Enzo Fernández lets fly from distance. Pickford tips it over. It’s probably going over anyway, but the fingertips are there, the cameras catch it, and the message is clear: stay calm, keep your shape, ride this out.

They don’t.

By 84:55, Enzo has too much time on the edge of the box. One touch, one swing, one brutal, clinical finish. Net ripples, stadium flips, and somewhere inside you something snaps.

Everyone in that moment knows. Players, coaches, fans. The equaliser doesn’t just level the score; it detonates the illusion. The hope that had finally felt real evaporates in an instant, leaving only that hollow, familiar ache.

Two minutes and 55 seconds. That’s how long it truly lived. Not the vague, background hope you carry into every tournament. Not the stubborn, defiant hope you cling to out of habit. Genuine, tangible, this-might-actually-happen hope.

It didn’t kill anyone. It did something stranger. It thrilled, it terrified, it reminded you why you keep coming back to this team, this sport, this emotional rollercoaster that never quite reaches the station.

Living with the curse

“It’s the hope that kills you,” the saying goes. It’s been pinned on everyone from Shakespeare to pub philosophers, adopted by fans from Lincoln City to the England away end. Ted Lasso rejects it, insists it’s the lack of hope that does the damage. Jackson Lamb goes darker still: “It’s not the hope that kills you. It’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you – that kills you.”

On nights like this, you can see the appeal of all three positions.

England’s bench might have benefited from Lasso’s optimism, refusing to sink deeper and deeper towards their own box. Or from Lamb’s brutality, calling out the panic, demanding aggression instead of retreat. Arm round the shoulder or boot up the backside – any intervention that stopped the slide.

But in the stands, in the pubs, on sofas across the country, the emotional truth is simpler. Hope is not immediate. It takes time to grow. It needs a goal, a tackle, a moment. When it finally arrives, it doesn’t paralyse. It electrifies.

The question, as ever with England, is what you do with it. Do you sit on it and try to protect it? Or do you trust yourself enough to chase more?

Maybe England will never quite answer that. Maybe the men’s team will never lift the thing everyone craves. Maybe this generation, like so many before it, will be defined by almosts and if-onlys.

For now, though, that sliver of belief – those 175 seconds when a World Cup final felt close enough to touch – still counts for something. If hope can drive people onto the streets and change societies, it can surely carry a football nation a few years into the future.

To a summer in 2028, perhaps, and the image of Adam Wharton raising a European Championship trophy. Not as prophecy. Just as a picture in the mind. A fleeting, fragile, utterly irresistible piece of hope.