Pride and pain

More years of hurt lie ahead, but good can come of this defeat: new strategies, fresh blood, realistic expectations

We still love you; come home. Like all good travel romances, perhaps England's 2023 World Cup was always destined to end in cold tears and bittersweet fragments of memories, the smell of reality wafting through the curtains. There will be no shame in losing to a superior Spain side, no recriminations or burning effigies for a group of players who left every piece of themselves on the Sydney pitch.

But regrets? They'll have a few. Moments that broke the other way, decisions they wish they could take back, and above all the opportunity to create something beautiful and monumental together, for everyone,  for ever. They are still European champions and nothing can touch the colossal sugar rush of that Wembley triumph. For another four years at least, however, the circle remains incomplete.

And if there was an irony here it was that the team who looked most composed and comfortable were the team who had won nothing at all. Spain had never reached a major final before, had a history of falling short in big games, had entered this tournament in a haze of confusion and disaffection. Their coach, Jorge Vilda - Cruella de Vilda, as he has been dubbed online - is openly disdained by most of his players, and even in their victory huddle was left dancing listlessly on his own, like the only sober guy at a house party.

But in the game of their lives, the Spanish team played the game of their lives. The most persistent motif of the evening was not the only goal by left-back Olga Carmona, or the second-half penalty save by Mary Earps, or even the moment of triumph. It was the recurring vision of babyblue shirts chasing blood red, Spain's midfielders weaving their kaleidoscopic patterns, the runs and the passes beginning to blur into each other like a migraine.