Dubai: Everyone is saying tonight’s semi is the real World Cup final, but I see your France-Belgium and raise you England.
We may have got this far without a real test, but we have greater team spirit and momentum than all of the other three sides put together, and we are just getting started.
Croatia will be exhausted from two unconvincing bouts of extra-time and penalties against Denmark and Russia, and although France and Belgium have respectively sawn through the likes of Argentina and Brazil, those tests would have taken a lot out of them too. We may have been gifted the easier route, but there’s a lot to be said for that, we’ve still had to beat what’s in front of us and have done it convincingly while conserving the maximum amount of energy.
Then we have heart and passion, more so than the rest of the remaining three sides, and that makes up for what we lack in so-called star power. Jordan Pickford, Harry Maguire and Kieran Trippier may have been unheard of before the tournament, but now they are our best players, and while the others rely on luminaries in the form of Kylian Mbappe, Kevin de Bruyne and Luka Modric, our star man Harry Kane can have a quiet game - as he did against Sweden – and we will still win. We invented football, 40 of the 92 players left in the Last Four play in our league. We may have one star on our chest but we’ve done incredible things in the past as a small island nation and will continue to do it again. You can’t buy or recreate that pride and spirit. It’s coming home.
