On Sunday evening the England football team became the country’s first men’s line-up to contest a major final outside England. Later that night, they also became the first team of any nationality to lose consecutive finals in the European Championships. There was no disgrace in losing 2-1 to Spain, who had been the best team of the 24 in the tournament (they won seven matches out of seven played) and there was a considerable weight of history on their side – since 2002, Spain or Spanish club teams had contested 26 major finals. They had won every one. But in a way the outcome was a microcosm of the reign of the England manager, Gareth Southgate. Should the achievement be considered a comparative triumph? Or another failure?

The photo on the home page shows Ollie Watkins celebrating with Marc Guéhi after the former’s 90th-minute match-winning goal against the Netherlands in the semi-final, the third match in succession England had won after conceding the first goal. In the final in Berlin on Sunday, the late joy belonged to Spain, with Mikel Oyarzabal’s decisive strike arriving in the 86th minute. England came close to snatching a second equaliser but the truth was they were beaten by a team which performed better on the night.

Throughout the tournament there had been much moaning about how ordinary – poor, even – England’s performances had been, especially given the fabulous array of attacking talent at the manager’s disposal. Therefore, of course, everything wrong was the manager’s fault. Gareth Southgate was useless, tactically inept and he should have been shown the door long ago.

Now that he has gone, as of yesterday, it is instructive to look at his record in comparison with that of his predecessors. Southgate was the third England manager to be in charge for over 100 games. His win percentage was better than either Alf Ramsey or Walter Winterbottom. Since England won the 1966 World Cup under Ramsey, they had won six knockout games in major championships prior to Southgate being appointed in 2016. Under him, they won nine. BG (Before Gareth) England had reached that one major final plus three semis (World Cup 1990 and the European Championships 1968 and 1996). In the past eight years they have reached the finals of two European Championships (2020 and 2024), the semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup and the quarter-finals of the 2022 World Cup. No other team made it as far as at least the quarters throughout that period. Statistically, Southgate presided over Peak England. And yet pundits, fans and the keyboard warriors saw fit to demean almost everything he did.

Southgate’s outward calmness seemed to annoy some, especially if one was minded to believe his teams played with excessive caution – a not unreasonable perception at times; maybe especially so this time. But he was aware of the expectation England fans have in spite of the history books suggesting a different reality. Ahead of the quarter-final against Switzerland, he was asked if he felt England had got an easy draw. “I would say that is the classic example of the sort of entitlement we have as a nation that creates drama and annoys our opponents,” he replied.

He has certainly done his bit in trying to improve on that but still England waits for another major trophy to join that one won long ago on a Wembley afternoon. By the time the next World Cup rolls around in two years hence it will be, in the phrase coined by that song, ‘Sixty Years of Hurt’.