Hope in Football: The Emotional Rollercoaster of England's World Cup Journey

“It’s the hope that kills you,” wrote Graham Burrell after Lincoln City’s 2-1 defeat by Wigan in 2024, watching a playoff dream ebb away at Sincil Bank. A throwaway line on a lower-league afternoon, but it sits comfortably alongside England’s latest collapse against Argentina, another entry in the long anthology of sporting self-harm.

Rebecca Solnit, in Hope in the Dark, reaches for something loftier. She quotes Maria Popova: “Critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naivety.” An argument for hope as an engine of change, a force that moves societies, not just scorelines. Try telling that to anyone who watched those final minutes on Wednesday night.

You can argue all you like about where a home defeat to Wigan or a World Cup exit ranks in the “pantheon of human suffering”. You know the answer, of course. It doesn’t. Yet in the small, tribal world of football, it feels as if it does. That’s the trick hope plays. It shrinks the world until the only thing that matters is the ball rolling back to Jordan Pickford and your heart thudding like it’s trying to punch its way out.

The phrase that won’t die

Nobody really knows who first muttered “It’s the hope that kills you.” Shakespeare? Peter Ustinov? Some bloke in a pub in 1957? The line has been polished and repackaged so often it now belongs to football as much as literature.

Ted Lasso tried to rehabilitate it. “I’ve been hearing this phrase y’all got over here that I ain’t too crazy about,” he says. “‘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.” That’s one end of the spectrum.

At the other sits Jackson Lamb from Slow Horses, a man who smokes, snarls and sees straight through sentiment. “It’s not the hope that kills you. It’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you – that kills you.” A line designed for England fans.

You wonder which of them England needed in the dugout in those final 30 minutes. Lasso, who wouldn’t have dreamt of a back six and a rearguard at the edge of their own box. Lamb, who would have called them idiots and told them to stop thinking and start playing. Arm round the shoulder or boot up the backside. England could have used either. Or both.

Fear first, hope later

What any England fan knows – any sports fan, really – is that hope doesn’t arrive at kick-off. Not real hope. At the start, it’s fear that runs the show.

Fear in the buildup. Fear during that absurd 10‑second countdown. Fear as the ball is rolled back to Pickford and the stadium inhales. You can feel your pulse doubling, the body quietly staging its own protest at what the brain insists on putting it through.

Then the match settles. Or at least it pretends to. The heart doesn’t calm so much as find a new, sustained level of anxiety. Giuliano Simeone charges and snaps and snarls at anything in white. Every challenge feels late, every tangle a conspiracy. Where’s the yellow? Are the conspiracists right? He misses Marc Guéhi with a kick, then throws himself in with his head like a shark snapping at air. Even clean Argentine tackles start to look sinister. England fouls, on the other hand, are righteous, necessary. Another pint of myopia, please.

Half-time is when the pessimism seeps in. Quietly at first. The longer this goes, the more you trust Argentina to find a way. They always seem to. “Muscle memory,” you mutter, knowing it’s nonsense but saying it anyway. “Wily bastards,” you add, which at least feels accurate.

The first real hit of hope

Then comes the moment. The cross is perfect. The finish is perfect. For a few seconds, the world explodes.

It isn’t just joy. It’s relief, release, a rush of possibility. The first true hit of hope. Not the vague pre-match “maybe we’ll do something here” but the sharp, focused version that arrives when England are leading and the clock is finally on their side.

The brain does its usual double act. “Well, at least they need two now,” it says, as if that has ever been a guarantee of anything with this team. Anyone who has watched England long enough knows the script: the lead is not a cushion, it’s a countdown to anxiety.

There is one other moment of pure ecstasy. Djed Spence, who has drifted through the game with a kind of casual brilliance, launches into a tackle that feels like it could power the national grid. He has looked so serene he might as well be thinking about the washing-up at home, then suddenly he’s Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci rolled into one, devouring a 50-50 like his life depends on it.

“Yes, Djed!” you roar at the screen. It’s the greatest England tackle since Eric Dier went through Sergio Ramos – and, in that instant, it feels wildly more important. In another universe, a better one, that’s the clip that leads every montage. That’s the statue outside Wembley.

The retreat

Somewhere in the middle of all this, England start to drop. Not a sudden collapse. A slow shuffle backwards. A line that was on the halfway line is now on the edge of the box, then inside it.

The hydration break comes and goes. You can feel it, even if you can’t diagram it on a tactics board. “It’s too soon to defend this,” you say, because everyone says it. At the Azteca in 1986, with 10 men, it made sense to cling on. Here, with the World Cup final beckoning and Argentina short of ideas, it feels like inviting the torture in, laying the table and lighting the candles.

Time still moves, though. With every missed chance, with every Pickford save, something unexpected happens. Hope, the real kind, starts to creep in. Not the wild, irrational version, but a tight, breathless calculation: maybe they can actually see this out.

In the 82nd minute, Nico O’Reilly blocks a pass, chases it down, and gets another block in. England are in Argentina’s half, which by this point feels like enemy territory. “That’s saved eight seconds,” you shout to John Brewin, sat nearby, both of you now counting the game in heartbeats rather than minutes.

A minute later, Lionel Messi – Lionel Messi – floats a cross harmlessly out of play for a goal-kick. That’s the moment. The tiny flicker. Maybe. Just maybe.

Two minutes and 55 seconds

The mind races ahead. England in a World Cup final. A few delirious days in New York. Preview podcasts that write themselves, TalkSport segments that don’t need a script. A column about hope, but the good kind this time, the kind that ends in open-top buses rather than autopsies.

Goal-kick to England. Scoring is hard, even when you have Messi. John Stones is juggling the ball, draining a few more seconds. Pickford steps up and thumps it long. O’Reilly chases, forces a throw-in deep in Argentina’s half. Guy Mowbray notes: “Eighty-four minutes on the clock now.” Alan Shearer admits: “I keep looking at that clock and thinking it’s going ever so slow.”

84:24. Enzo Fernández tries his luck from distance. Pickford tips it over. It’s going over anyway, but he isn’t taking chances. “Fine,” you tell yourself. “Just keep your shape. Just hold.”

84:55. Enzo has too much time on the edge of the box. Too much grass, too many options. He shoots again. This one doesn’t miss. This one rips straight through the fragile shell England have built and, with it, the fantasy.

Everyone knows, instantly. The players. The crowd. The people watching in living rooms and bars and fan parks. There is time on the clock, but not in the soul. You can feel the air go out of the night.

From the moment O’Reilly blocks that pass to the moment Fernández scores, two minutes and 55 seconds have passed. That’s the window. That’s how long the hope was pure, uncut and unspoiled by the usual English caveats.

It didn’t kill anyone. It did something else entirely. It thrilled, it terrified, it reminded you why you keep coming back in the first place.

What’s left when the whistle goes

So where does that leave Solnit’s argument, Popova’s line about hope and critical thinking, in the wreckage of another England exit? Maybe here: hope doesn’t have to end in a trophy to have value.

You can ask whether you’ll ever be ready to see England’s men actually win something. Ready for that emotional weight, that final rewriting of the story. Maybe that day never comes. Maybe you never have to find out.

For now, a morsel of hope is doing enough heavy lifting. If it can fuel protest, movements, and social change, it can also carry a smaller dream: Adam Wharton, somewhere in the near future, lifting the European Championship trophy in 2028.

Not as a certainty. Not even as a probability. Just as a fleeting image that flashes across your mind in the 82nd minute of a World Cup semi-final, before Enzo Fernández winds up his right foot and reminds you what this sport does better than any other.

It gives you just enough hope to come back for more.