On this day, England’s national psyche was resurrected from the grave—not through glory, but through the peculiar alchemy of beating France 6-4 in what can only be described as a 10-goal requiem for European football dignity.
Bukayo Saka, in a performance that will be studied by historians as evidence of collective delusion, scored a hat-trick. Three goals. In a third-place play-off. The kind of match that exists only because two nations failed at the only thing that mattered. Yet here we are, celebrating as though the trophy itself had been hoisted.
The scoreline alone—6-4—reads like a cricket match that wandered onto a football pitch and forgot its own rules. France, a nation that has won the World Cup twice in the last 24 years, conceded four goals to a team that, let us be honest, nobody was watching by this point. The play-off exists in a strange purgatory: too important to ignore, too meaningless to matter. Both sides played like they were auditioning for a Netflix documentary about redemption arcs that will never be made.
England’s best men’s World Cup finish since 1966. Let that sink in. Sixty years of football history, and the nation is genuinely, unironically celebrating third place as though it were Excalibur itself. The irony is so thick you could bottle it and sell it as premium English export.
Saka’s hat-trick will be remembered. Whether that is a triumph or a cautionary tale depends entirely on which way the wind blows tomorrow.