The Role of Hope in Football: England's World Cup Journey
“It’s the hope that kills you,” they say. Rebecca Solnit would argue the opposite. Maria Popova too. They see hope as a radical force, a catalyst for change. Try selling that to an England supporter staring at a television as Argentina turn a World Cup semi-final inside out in three minutes.
There are different scales of suffering, of course. Lincoln City losing 2-1 at home to Wigan in 2024, prompting Graham Burrell to declare their play-off push dead, sits on one end. England’s collapse on Wednesday, on another. Neither belongs in Solnit’s “pantheon of human suffering”. They belong in the other great canon: footballing misery, where hope is both the fuel and the poison.
No one really knows who first coined “It’s the hope that kills you.” Shakespeare, Peter Ustinov, some anonymous fan on a rain-sodden terrace – take your pick. The line has been borrowed, twisted, repackaged. Ted Lasso rejects it outright. “I think it’s the lack of hope that comes and gets you,” he says. Jackson Lamb from Slow Horses offers a darker refinement: “It’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you – that kills you.”
On Wednesday night, England lived somewhere between the two. Hope didn’t kill anyone. It just made those final minutes feel like a slow, exquisite form of torture.
Fear first, hope later
Hope doesn’t arrive at kick-off. Fear gets there early and bags the best seat. It lurks in the build-up, in the absurd 10-second countdown, in the moment the ball rolls back to Jordan Pickford and you suddenly remember that your heart has a speed limit.
As the game settles, the pulse drops a notch, but never to calm. This is base-level anxiety, punctuated by flashes of fury. Giuliano Simeone nips, hacks, snarls his way through the first half. Every challenge from an Argentinian becomes an outrage, every English foul a necessary evil. A yellow card for them becomes a moral obligation. For us? Just good, honest industry. The bar tab grows: another pint of myopia, please.
Half-time is when pessimism first clears its throat. You start muttering football clichés to yourself, trying to sound wise. “The longer this goes, the more likely Argentina will do it.” “They know how to win these games.” “Muscle memory.” “Wily bastards.” None of it changes anything. It just fills the silence.
The goal that changed the air
Then it comes. The cross is perfect. The finish is perfect. For a moment, everything is. The roar is not just joy; it’s release. The pressure valve spins. The brain, always ahead of itself, starts rearranging the future: a World Cup final, travel plans, preview shows that write themselves. And in the middle of it all, the old, battered England fan’s caveat: “Well, at least they need two now.”
Hope, finally, has something to cling to.
The only other moment that comes close is Djed Spence’s tackle. Spence has floated through much of the game with an almost alarming calm, as if he might wander off at full-time to do the washing-up and forget he’d just played Argentina. Then he flies in, perfectly, and the celebration is pure Chiellini-Bonucci: chest out, face contorted, a primal scream of defiance.
“Yes, Djed!” It feels enormous. The greatest England tackle since Eric Dier on Sergio Ramos, only this one feels even bigger in the moment. If the ending had been different, that challenge would open the montage. It would sit in bronze outside a stadium one day.
The retreat
By then, the retreat had already begun. England sank. Lines dropped. The instinct to protect, to cling, took over. Was it instruction? Was it fear? Was it just what English teams do when the prize edges into view? Thomas Tuchel might have had a tactical thesis. The players might have had their own explanations. Most watching didn’t need another chalkboard.
This was about those few minutes when hope felt real, solid enough to touch. The best part of a tournament is not the 90 minutes themselves – it’s existing inside the thing. It’s watching other games knowing you still have a stake. The matches are the ordeal you must endure to keep that feeling alive.
With 10 men at the Azteca in 1986, defending deep made sense. Here, with time still thick on the clock, it felt like willingly stepping into the torture chamber. Still, the seconds ticked away, Argentina missed, Pickford saved, and hope edged further in, uninvited but impossible to turn away.
Eight seconds and a maybe
In the 82nd minute, Nico O’Reilly blocks a pass, chases it, blocks again. England, briefly, are in Argentina’s half, an unfamiliar landscape by then. Those few seconds feel precious enough to count.
“That’s saved eight seconds,” comes the shout across the press box to John Brewin. It’s half joke, half calculation. A minute later, Lionel Messi lofts a cross out of play for a goal-kick. Harmless. Ordinary. And that, oddly, is the moment the door cracks open: maybe. Just maybe.
Thoughts race. England in a World Cup final. A few delirious days in New York. Preview podcasts and late-night radio hits that practically script themselves. A column about hope, but the good kind this time. The selfishness of it all is obvious, and yet it feels like a privilege.
Goal-kick to England. Stones juggles the ball, a tiny act of defiance. Pickford sends it long. O’Reilly gets there, forces a throw-in deep in Argentina’s half. The clock reads 84 minutes. Guy Mowbray notes the time. Alan Shearer admits he keeps staring at it, convinced it’s moving in slow motion.
For once, he’s right.
Two minutes, 55 seconds
At 84:24, Enzo Fernández lets fly from distance. Pickford tips it over. It’s heading over anyway, but the save feels reassuring. Harmless. Manageable. Just keep your shape.
At 84:55, Fernández has too much space on the edge of the box. One touch, another shot. This time it finds the corner. In an instant, the mood shifts from calculation to resignation. Everyone knows. You can see it in the players’ shoulders, feel it in the air. The hope doesn’t die in stages. It snaps.
Two minutes and 55 seconds. That’s how long the hope felt pure, uncut, unqualified. It didn’t kill anyone. It electrified. It terrified. It reminded you why this matters at all.
There’s a lingering question that hangs over every England campaign: are we even ready to see them win something? After decades of turning disappointment into an identity, what happens if the story changes? Maybe that test never comes. Maybe it does.
For now, the morsel is enough. A sliver of belief that outlasts the result. If hope can stir people to change the world, it can at least carry a supporter through the idea of Adam Wharton lifting a European Championship trophy in 2028.
Even if, as history insists, it’s only for a fleeting moment.
