England’s Collapse: Hope, Fear, and 175 Seconds

Hope is supposed to be a virtue. Rebecca Solnit builds a whole case for it in Hope in the Dark, quoting Maria Popova’s neat equation: “Critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naivety.” A rallying cry for those who believe belief itself can move the world.

Then there is football. Where hope usually just moves your blood pressure.

“It is the hope that kills you,” wrote Graham Burrell after Lincoln City’s 2-1 home defeat to Wigan in 2024, a small, local echo of a line that has floated around football for decades. He thought that was the end of their playoff push. A season shrunk to a sentence.

Where, exactly, you file that Lincoln defeat in the grand archive of human suffering is anyone’s guess. The same goes for England’s late surrender to Argentina. It doesn’t belong in the same paragraph as real tragedy. Yet in the sealed, irrational world of sport, it sits somewhere between farce and heartbreak, powered almost entirely by that one volatile element: hope.

The Killing Kind of Hope

Nobody quite knows who first said: “It is the hope that kills you.” Shakespeare? Ustinov? Some anonymous terrace philosopher at a windswept ground in the 1950s? The phrase has been polished and repackaged ever since.

Ted Lasso rejects it. “I think it’s the lack of hope that comes and gets you,” he says. “I believe in hope. I believe in belief.” Jackson Lamb, from Slow Horses, twists the knife further: “It’s not the hope that kills you. It’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you – that kills you.”

You wonder which one England needed in the dugout in those final 30 minutes. Lasso, who would never countenance a back six, who would refuse to sink into his own penalty area and wait for the storm. Or Lamb, who would light a cigarette, call them all idiots and demand they stop feeling sorry for themselves.

An arm around the shoulder. A kick up the backside. England’s emotional range in one imaginary technical area.

But every England supporter, every sports fan, understands the real problem. Hope, in its purest form, doesn’t energise. It paralyses. It doesn’t arrive at kick-off. At that point, fear runs the show.

Fear in the build-up

Fear during the ludicrous 10-second countdown. Fear as the ball rolls back to Jordan Pickford for the first time and you can almost hear your own heart doubling its usual tempo.

The Game Settles, the Nerves Don’t

Once the match finds its rhythm, your pulse doesn’t exactly calm; it just levels out into a steady hum of anxiety. Base-level angst, punctuated by little eruptions of fury.

Giuliano Simeone harries and hacks and snarls his way around the pitch. Every challenge feels like a crime. Where’s the yellow card? Are the conspiracists right? Then he misses Marc Guéhi entirely and launches himself headfirst like a shark biting at thin air. By that point, even Argentina’s clean tackles feel dirty. England’s fouls, naturally, are acts of justice.

Another pint of myopia, please.

Half-time is when the pessimism starts to seep in. You know this script. The longer it stays tight, the more you trust Argentina’s nous. They’ve done this before. They understand the dark arts. You mutter daft phrases like “muscle memory” and more accurate ones like “wily bastards”.

Then comes the goal.

The Cross, the Finish, the Surge

The cross is perfect. The finish is perfect. For a second, the whole thing feels perfect.

It’s an explosion: joy, relief, and something more dangerous – possibility. The first true rush of hope. Not the vague pre-match version, but the sharp, invasive kind that barges into your chest and starts rearranging the furniture.

You tell yourself the old lie: “Well, at least they need two now.” A veteran England reflex, a flimsy emotional shield. You’ve seen this team, and others before it, cough up leads too many times to trust anything as bold as comfort.

There is one more moment of pure euphoria. Djed Spence, who has glided through most of the evening as if all this were a mildly inconvenient detour before the washing-up, suddenly detonates into the tackle of his life. He celebrates like Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci rolled into one snarling centre-back.

“Yes, Djed!” you shout at the television. It feels like the greatest England tackle since Eric Dier clattered Sergio Ramos – only this one, in the moment, seems even more important. If the night ends differently, that tackle leads every montage. That’s the still image they cast in bronze.

Instead, it becomes a relic from an alternate reality.

The Retreat

By the time the hydration break arrives, the retreat has already begun. The line of engagement drops. The back line sinks. You can see the shape of the final act forming.

How many people said it out loud? “It’s too soon to defend this.” At the Azteca in 1986, with 10 men and a different kind of weight on their shoulders, England had some justification for clinging on. Here, it feels like inviting torture.

Even if they see it out, can you? Can you live through 10, 15 minutes of this, watching the clock slow to a crawl while Lionel Messi and Enzo Fernández circle like sharks?

Time drips away. England miss chances, Argentina miss chances, and with every clearance, every save, hope slides quietly back in. You don’t want it, but you can’t stop it.

The 175 Seconds

The 82nd minute brings a small, ridiculous victory. Nico O’Reilly blocks a pass, chases it, blocks again. England are in Argentina’s half, which by now feels like foreign soil. “That’s saved eight seconds,” comes the shout across the press area to John Brewin. Eight seconds, celebrated like a goal.

A minute later, Messi – Messi – lofts a cross harmlessly out for a goal-kick. No danger. No drama. Just a misjudged ball drifting away into the night.

That is the moment it happens. The flicker. Maybe. Just maybe.

You start to picture it. England in a World Cup final. A few delirious days in New York, preview podcasts and radio hits writing themselves. A column about hope, but the other kind of hope – fulfilled, not crushed. The selfish professional dream, colliding with the fan’s impossible one.

Goal-kick to England. Scoring is hard, even with Messi. John Stones juggles the ball, a little act of defiance. Pickford launches it long. O’Reilly gets something on it. Throw-in to Argentina, deep in their own half.

“Eighty-four minutes on the clock now,” says Guy Mowbray. “I keep looking at that clock and thinking it’s going ever so slow,” replies Alan Shearer.

84:24. Enzo Fernández lets fly from distance. Pickford tips it over. It’s probably going over anyway, but the fingertips add drama. No matter. Reset. Keep your shape. Stay calm.

84:55. Enzo again. Too much space on the edge of the box. Too much time. He shoots. This one doesn’t need help. It rips through England and through that fragile little bubble of belief.

Enzo scores. Everyone in the stadium, everyone on the sofa, knows what that means.

Two minutes and 55 seconds. That’s how long the hope was real. Not theoretical, not aspirational. Real. And it didn’t kill anyone. It was electric. Terrifying. Alive.

Living With the Almost

There is a question that hangs over all of this: are some England fans secretly afraid of actually winning something? Of what it would do to the story they’ve been telling themselves for decades? Of what it would do to the rituals, the jokes, the identity built on glorious failure and exit wounds?

Maybe that test will never come. Maybe England will keep circling the big prizes, never quite landing, condemned to live in the space between expectation and regret.

For now, a sliver of hope seems to be enough. Not the grand, world-changing variety Solnit writes about, but its smaller, scruffier cousin. The hope that lets you picture Adam Wharton lifting the European Championship trophy in 2028, even if only for a fleeting second before the whistle goes and reality barges back in.

Because in football, as in life, hope doesn’t always change the outcome. Sometimes it just changes how those 175 seconds feel – and that, maddeningly, is why we keep coming back.