Georgia Stanway’s vision puts England on the path to salvation

Six minutes into extra time, and for the first time all evening, Georgia Stanway had room to breathe. It had been a taut and suffocating night, in many ways a horrible night, a night when the tension knots itself in the stomach like a tumour. But finally, a little after 10pm, the angst and the doubt and the foul throws and the blur of substitutions had sharpened to a single moment of clarity.

All game, Stanway had found her way blocked and thwarted by a forest of legs, by a barbed‑wire fence of red shirts. All game, Aitana Bonmatí in midfield had clung to her like a catsuit. One touch was a luxury. Two pretty much guaranteed you a bruise on the ankle. But now, as a Spanish move broke down and the ball slipped into her stride 40 yards from goal, there was only pure air in front of her.

Stanway pulled back her right leg, summoned all the strength left in it, and entrusted the rest to her education: those long winter mornings in the gym in Manchester, training sessions in front of a crowd of zero, the little bolt of instinct that takes over the body of an athlete at exactly the moment when they stop thinking and start dreaming.

The ball soared with a little backspin and a little curve, holding up a little in the air. Out in the world, an audience of millions hung on these devastating little quirks of physics and geometry. Is it silly that so much happiness can rest on something so tiny and trivial? One shot flies wide and another smacks the net, and on these fates entire projects and careers are made and broken. These inches are nothing but the meaning we give to them. And as Sandra Paños threw herself at a cause she already knew was lost, a nation slowly began to rise from its seats.

What happened next? The England