Hope and Fear in England's Latest Football Lesson

Rebecca Solnit once wrote about hope as a political act, a way of staring down the worst of humanity and still choosing to believe. Maria Popova sharpened the thought: “Critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naivety.”

Football doesn’t deal in that kind of nuance. It just gives you a scoreboard and a feeling in your stomach.

Ask Graham Burrell, who watched Lincoln City lose 2-1 at home to Wigan in 2024 and concluded: “It is the hope that kills you. I feel perhaps our playoff push was finally killed off yesterday.”

File England’s collapse against Argentina in the same cabinet. Not in the grand ledger of human suffering, obviously, but in that peculiar, private agony that only sport can deliver: the moment when hope finally shows up, looks you in the eye, and then walks straight out of the door.

“It’s the hope that kills you” – or is it?

Nobody knows who first coined the line. Shakespeare? Peter Ustinov? Some bloke in Row Z at a non-league ground in 1953? The phrase has been passed around so often it’s become football scripture.

Others have tried to rewrite it. Ted Lasso, the avatar of American optimism in English football: “I’ve been hearing this phrase y’all got over here that I ain’t too crazy about. ‘It’s the hope that kills you.’ I disagree. I think it’s the lack of hope that comes and gets you. See, I believe in hope. I believe in belief.”

Then there’s Jackson Lamb from Slow Horses, a different kind of philosopher. “It’s not the hope that kills you. It’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you – that kills you.”

You can picture both of them in the England dugout during those final 30 minutes against Argentina. Lasso, refusing to turn a back four into a back six, demanding they push up, play, enjoy it. Lamb, calling them idiots, lighting a cigarette, telling them to get on with it. Arm round the shoulder or boot up the backside – football offers the full emotional toolkit.

But out in the stands, or on the sofa, the tool you’re left with is hope. And hope, in football, is rarely a clean, noble thing. It’s messy. It’s incapacitating.

Fear first, always

Hope doesn’t walk on to the pitch with the players. Fear does.

Fear in the buildup. Fear during the absurd 10‑second countdown. Fear as the ball is rolled back to Jordan Pickford and the stadium collectively forgets how to breathe. Heart rates double. Rational thought exits the ground.

Once the game settles, the pulse drops from sheer panic to a permanent hum of anxiety. Call it base-level angst. The kind that spikes every time Giuliano Simeone flies into another challenge, all flailing limbs and snarls.

Where’s the yellow? Is the referee buying this? Is there something going on here? Conspiracy theories start to sound reasonable. Simeone then goes for Marc Guéhi and somehow misses with his boot and leads with his head, like a shark misjudging the leap. Even when Argentina time their tackles perfectly, they feel like acts of malice. Fouls by English players, on the other hand, feel like justice.

Another pint of myopia, please.

Half-time is when pessimism properly arrives. That familiar voice: the longer this goes on, the more likely Argentina will sort it out. They’ve done this before. They know how to win these games. You call it “muscle memory”. You also call them “wily bastards”. Both feel true.

When hope finally walks in

Then comes the moment. The cross is perfect. The finish is perfect. Net, noise, limbs.

Joy first. Then relief. Then the dangerous one: possibility.

England are ahead. Argentina now need two. You know this script, you’ve watched this team too long to trust it, but still the calculation forms in your head: “Well, at least they need two now.” This is the first real hit of hope. Not the vague pre-match daydream, but the sharp, intoxicating kind that arrives with a lead and a clock that seems, for once, willing to help you.

The only other time the stadium truly erupts is for Djed Spence. One tackle. One moment.

Spence has played as if this is just another job, something to be done well before heading home to do the washing-up. Then he flies into a challenge with the ferocity of Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci rolled into one. He wins the ball and celebrates like it’s a goal. It feels like one.

“Yes, Djed!” It’s the sort of tackle that, in a different timeline, opens every montage. The kind that gets bronzed outside a stadium. The greatest England tackle since Eric Dier on Sergio Ramos, only this one actually matters more.

The problem is what comes after.

The retreat

You don’t need a tactics seminar to know what happened next. The retreat began before the hydration break. Lines dropped. Nerves rose.

How many of us muttered the same thing: “It’s too soon to defend this.” At the Azteca in 1986, with 10 men, it made sense to cling on. Here, it felt like a choice. Or a reflex. Or paralysis. Take your pick.

Still, the clock moved. Every missed Argentine chance, every Pickford save, every block, every clearance – each one fed the thing we pretend to hate. Hope started to creep in.

In the 82nd minute, Nico O’Reilly charged down a pass, chased it, blocked again. England were in Argentina’s half. It felt like stepping into a foreign country. Those few seconds mattered. “That’s saved eight seconds,” came the verdict in the press box. Eight seconds closer.

A minute later Lionel Messi lofted a cross out of play for a goal-kick. Harmless. Wasteful, even. That was the moment the thought took shape: maybe. Just maybe.

The mind raced ahead. A World Cup final. A few delirious days in New York. Preview podcasts and radio hits that would write themselves. A column about hope, but the good kind this time. The professional and the personal merging into one selfish, glorious possibility.

Two minutes and 55 seconds

Goal-kick to England.

Scoring is hard, even when you have Messi. John Stones juggles the ball, a tiny act of calm in the chaos. Pickford thumps it long. O’Reilly gets something on it. Throw-in to Argentina deep in their own half.

“Eighty-four minutes on the clock now,” says Guy Mowbray. “I keep looking at that clock and thinking it’s going ever so slow,” replies Alan Shearer. Everyone watching knows exactly what he means.

84:24. Enzo Fernández lets fly from distance. Pickford tips it over. The ball is heading over anyway, but the fingertips add drama. No matter. Reset. Keep your shape. Hold.

84:55. Enzo again. Too much time at the edge of the box. Too much space. Too many red shirts retreating rather than advancing. He shoots. This time he scores.

And in that instant, every England fan knows. It’s done.

Not mathematically. Not officially. But emotionally. The hope that had finally arrived, that had been nurtured and fed by each passing second, is gone.

When you add it up, the purest form of belief – that clear, uncluttered conviction that this might actually happen – lasted two minutes and 55 seconds.

Hope as a way of life

It didn’t kill anyone. It did something else. It thrilled. It terrified. It reminded people they were alive.

There’s a long-running question for followers of England’s men: are they ready to see this team actually win something? Ready to process that? Ready for the emotional rewire that comes with it? Maybe that test will never come. Maybe that’s the point.

For now, a morsel of hope remains enough. The little flashes. The two minutes and 55 seconds when the future looked different.

If hope can push societies to change, as Solnit argues, then it can do something smaller but no less real in football. It can let a nation picture Adam Wharton, in 2028, lifting the European Championship trophy. Not as a prediction, not as a promise, but as a fleeting, stubborn image that refuses to die.

Because for all the pain and all the punchlines, England fans keep turning up. Not in spite of hope. Because of it.