England and Germany meet again for Euros final but goalposts have moved

The most striking difference is the feeling of space. Space in the stands and space on the pitch. As England and Germany step out for the final of the 2009 European Championship, the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki is less than half full: the rows of black plastic seats creating their own shade, the noise simply evaporating like steam. In large part this is attributable to the fact that the final – for some mystifying reason – is being played on a Thursday evening in September. Some of the English newspapers haven’t even bothered to send anybody.

The crowd of just over 15,000 is treated to a ragged rout: Germany running out 6-2 winners, forcing England’s loose assemblage of mostly semi-pro players to chase them to exhaustion. The level of commitment is unstinting. The level of technical ability is surprisingly good. What’s missing is the intensity: the tactical sophistication, the speed of thought and action, the physical conditioning that allows modern players to sprint and change direction and leap and slide with the same vigour in minute 90 as in minute one.

It feels like ancient history, and in a way it is, and in a way it isn’t. Some of the players involved in that game are still knocking around. The substitute goalkeeper Lisa Weiss is Merle Frohms’s understudy at Wolfsburg. The unsinkable Jill Scott, now 35, has featured for England at this year’s tournament. But the game they were playing then and the game they are playing now may as well be two different sports, existing in two different universes.

And so 13 years after Faye White and Birgit Prinz led England and Germany out into a half-empty stadium and a world indifferent to them, Leah Williamson and Alexandra Popp will feel the noise and the claustrophobia of a