The identity shift that has England on the brink of soccer glory

livemint.com:

BERLIN—To anyone familiar with the England national soccer team’s long and tortured history of humiliations and pratfalls, the squad that will play in Sunday’s European Championship final on Sunday has been completely unrecognizable. The close calls have gone their way. They have won penalty shootouts.

And the heartbreaking late goals have all been scored by guys with the Three Lions on their jersey, not against them. All of which has been as unfamiliar to England fans as tea without milk. But as the team sits 90 minutes from its first major trophy since 1966, the reason for its radical transformation has become clear.

Over the past decade, the England soccer team has undergone what amounts to a wholesale personality transplant. “We weren’t savvy, we weren’t tournament-wise," England manager Gareth Southgate said before Wednesday’s semifinal victory over the Netherlands. “This group are different." Nothing underlines those differences quite as starkly as England’s record under Southgate.

At the four major tournaments since he took the job, following England’s embarrassing defeat by Iceland at Euro 2016, the Three Lions have now reached two finals. In the nearly seven decades and 23 tournament appearances before his tenure, they had made just one. Yet the team’s run in Germany hasn’t produced universal acclaim back home.

Instead a tortured fan base that has learned to embrace valiant failure (see: Robert Falcon Scott reaching the South Pole in second place or the Three Lions losing penalty shootouts to Germany) has been unsure how to react to an England team that knows how to win ugly. Glorious defeats after brave efforts were familiar. Gritty success through a canny understanding of the task at hand is somehow jarring.