England LOSE Euro 2024 Final as they Suffer Heartache Again after Spain Scores Agonising Late Goal

KEEP on living dangerously; eventually, you will slip and break your neck.

Gareth Southgate’s men had strolled along a tightrope throughout this tournament, falling behind in all four knock-out ties.

And despite super sub-Cole Palmer threatening to rescue them with an equalizer, Mikel Oyarzabal netted the 86th-minute winner for Spain’s deserving champions.

England had been poor throughout most of this Euros and they were thoroughly outplayed for most of the final.

There may have been late heartbreak but this was not a case of glorious failure.

Spain was a far superior football team for the past four weeks, and England was a team living on moments.

And that is how the final panned out, Spain passed and moved England to smithereens, while England enjoyed just one moment from Palmer.

Football is not coming home as the Three Lions became the first team to ever lose back-to-back Euros finals - and Southgate will surely now be heading off.

He has raised England significantly over these past eight years but after two finals, a semi and a quarter-final, he will go down in history as a nearly man.

A near man who succeeded a whole bunch of nowhere-near men - but a near man all the same.

If there had been English optimism before kick-off then it was due to the wondrous weirdness of this road movie to Berlin.

The way Southgate’s team seemed to have cast off so many age-old English failings - an injury-time equalizer, five perfect shoot-out spot-kicks, and a last-minute semi-final winner.

Those sorts of things didn’t happen to us until Southgate came along.

Fatalism had been replaced by a sense of destiny - however much more impressive the Spanish had been in getting here.

The English had traveled in their tens of thousands, wide-eyed and thirsty, the QR codes on their phones like golden tickets to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

The first major final on foreign soil, and for those who could remember the 1990s, the sweetness of a major final in the German capital of all places.

It was nothing like that wretched night at Wembley three years ago, when Luke Shaw, the only Englishman to score in a major international final in the past half-century, was back for his first start since February 18 at Luton.

This atmospheric arena, where Jesse Owens defied Adolf Hitler, was a long way from Kenilworth Road.

The English were in fine voice but Spain started with a matador’s strut, looking every inch like a team that had arrived on the back of six straight wins, none of them on penalties.

Nico Williams was a menace on the left and John Stones needed to execute a tackle perfectly on the edge of the six-yard box to deny the winger a clear sight of goal.

Southgate scrapped the back three which had served him so well and reverted to a 4-2-3-1, with Jude Bellingham shoved out on the left like a spare part.

It was scruffy, scrappy, nervy stuff, with only Shaw looking assured, and Kane - who hasn’t looked match-fit all tournament, was booked f