The agonising climax to last Saturday’s men’s Champions League final in Budapest will haunt Arsenal supporters for years, as hope turned to despair in the time it took to fire a ball over a crossbar. Penalty shootouts – “a sporting version of Russian roulette”, in the words of a Guardian editorial – are a brutal way to lose a football match, and the England men’s team used to know that only too well, famously leading Gareth Southgate to use a psychologist to address players’ nerves.
But for English football, the pain in north London was offset by a triumphant Sunday parade, where the Premier League champions celebrated their achievements, joined by the Arsenal women’s team bus. The women’s side had won the inaugural Fifa Women’s Champions Cup and reached the Uefa Champions League semi-final – they remain the only English women’s team to have won that competition.
“England and Scotland head to the World Cup after a gripping domestic season, with Arsenal's penalty heartbreak fresh in the memory.”
Across Britain, the season was equally gripping. Scotland saw its most dramatic championship race for 40 years, with Hearts coming within minutes of winning a first title since 1960 and humbling the old firm duopoly of Rangers and Celtic. In England, the Premier League’s upwardly mobile middle classes confirmed the strength in depth of the richest men’s league in the world: Aston Villa won their first European trophy since the 1980s, and Crystal Palace claimed their first ever, beating Rayo Vallecano in a joyous Uefa Conference League final in Leipzig that saw south London en fête.
Now both nations turn to the World Cup. Thomas Tuchel’s England squad flew out on Monday to a pre-tournament camp in Miami; Scotland flew to Florida on Sunday. It is the first time both have competed in a men’s World Cup this century – the last was in 1998. The buildup has been overshadowed by controversy over the eye-watering price of tickets, particularly in the United States, but for those who can afford to be there, the wait is almost over.
Guardian football writers have already picked their tournament highlights. Ed Aarons rated Paraguay 1-1 Germany as match of the tournament, a last-32 tie decided by a penalty shootout that Germany – not supposed to lose in that manner – did “in spectacular fashion”. Alexander Abnos described Algeria 3-3 Austria as “a completely strange fever dream” that seemed to exist on a separate plane of reality. Nick Ames, who attended Mexico 2-3 England at the awesome Azteca, called it a grippingly tense game and a high point for the Three Lions. Ben Fisher noted that Egypt 1-1 Iran in Seattle was packed with late drama, Iran twice hitting the woodwork and having a stoppage-time winner disallowed. Barry Glendenning picked Argentina 3-2 Egypt, where the defending champions clawed back a two-goal deficit courtesy of a Lionel Messi-inspired comeback.
As the Guardian’s editorial put it: “the best may be yet to come.”