“So Portugal celebrating once again, England lose a penalty shootout. Tears on the pitch, no doubt tears right around the country. Another World Cup dream comes to an end. Complete desolation.”
And so Gary Lineker, voice unusually dreary, drearier than you’ve ever heard it, narrates the moments immediately following England’s defeat to Portugal at the 2006 World Cup.
The players linger on the field. Hunched. Distraught. Rio Ferdinand can’t stop crying nor use his legs to stand up. Steven Gerrard lays still on his back trying to remember how to breathe. Frank Lampard just sits and shakes his head in disbelief. Stewart Downing looks a bit lost, probably because he is Stewart Downing.
Ashley Cole glares into the middle distance. It glares back. David Beckham, an empty vessel even among other footballers, has nothing meaningful to say to his teammates. And Gary Neville, eyes wet and red, puffs his chest out just far enough to go over and congratulate the Portuguese players.
It’s time we talked about one of the greatest performances we’ve ever seen from an England player. It was none of them. It’s time we talked about Owen Hargreaves.
Harry Symeou hosts Jack Gallagher & Toby Cudworth to look back on Germany ’06 as part of the ‘Our World Cups’ series. We take a trip down memory lane – join us!
Let’s be honest, the bar isn’t particularly high for standout individual performances under Sven-Goran Eriksson. Only Wayne Rooney’s one-man demolition jobs against Switzerland and Croatia at Euro 2004 spring to mind.
But over the course of 120 gruelling minutes in Gelsenkirchen, Owen Hargreaves reminded fans that some players really did care about representing the country, even despite all the weird resistance he received in the press and from the stands as a result of being born in Canada to a Welsh mother.
After being named as a surprise inclusion in the final squad, the Daily Express wrote that the Bayern Munich midfielder would make a good tour guide. The Sun, bizarrely, said he had ‘the public persona of a mass murderer’. Henry Winter believed Hargreaves could ‘count himself lucky to be on board’.
It was likely due to the media reaction that Hargreaves was booed by England supporters after replacing Joe Cole for the final seven minutes of England’s opening game against Paraguay. Despite his success at Bayern, where he had started and won a UEFA Champions League in 2001 and was coming off the back of a league and cup double, he was painted as an unnecessary…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at 90min EN…