So there we have it, another gut-wrenching near miss for football's perennial under-achievers to add to their highlight reel. Spain are European champions, and deservedly so, while England are once again left pondering what might have been.
Much of the pre-Euro 2024 final talk centred around victory being 'written in the stars' for the Three Lions, who arrived in Berlin riding a wave of remarkable good fortune. Two brilliant last-gasp goals, a penalty shootout, and one of the worst VAR decisions of all time helped keep an entire nation's hopes of ending 58 years of hurt alive, with the dull standard of football being played reduced to an afterthought.
But England's luck ran out at the Olympiastadion. They couldn't grind out the win that mattered most as Spain put on a masterclass in fluidity and ruthlessness. "I’m devastated for everyone," Gareth Southgate told ITV Sport after the 2-1 defeat. "We have just fallen a little short."
That short sentence more or less sums up Southgate's entire eight-year tenure in charge. The 53-year-old deserves a lot of credit for transforming England into genuine silverware contenders, but he wasn't the right man to take the final step. After a four-week emotional rollercoaster in Germany, it's clear a new direction is needed, and Southgate has done the right thing in walking away now while his dignity is still firmly intact.