It's Coming Home! England's Dream in World Cup 2018 Part 2

We continue our story about England's dream of the 2018 World Cup, and we reached the second round.

England "deliberately" lost against Belgium to avoid facing Brazil in the quarterfinals, But it bumped into another team from South America, which caused it a lot of problems.

The Second-Round Match

On July 3, 2018, at the Otkritie Arena in Moscow, the England team faced its Colombian counterpart, in front of more than 40,000 spectators who filled the stands of the match stadium.

At nine o'clock Russian time, US international referee Mark Geiger blew his whistle, announcing the start of the match.

The England team managed to open the scoring in the 57th minute through a penalty kick scored by Harry Kane, and England managed to maintain the result until the last minutes, but defender Yari Mina (who moved to Barcelona after the tournament) had a different opinion, when he scored the equalizer from a perfect header at 90 +3 minute.

The match went to extra time, which also ended in a draw so that the two teams went to penalty kicks.

England managed to win the penalty shootout 4-3.

Harry Kane, Marcus Rashford, Kieran Trippier, and Eric scored for England, while Jordan Henderson missed his penalty kick.

Falcao, Guadrado and Muriel scored for Colombia, while Uribe and Carlos Baca missed.

Thus, England qualified for the quarterfinals after a great struggle.

The Quarter-Final Match

In the quarterfinals, on July 7, at the Cosmos Arena in Samara, the England team faced its Swedish counterpart.

At 6:00 Russian time, Dutch international referee Bjorn Kuipers blew his whistle, announcing the start of the match.

The England team managed to win the match without any difficulty and with a score of 2-0, goals scored by Harry Maguire in the 30th minute and Dele Alli in the 59th minute.

Thus, England qualified for the World Cup semi-finals for the first time since the 1990 World Cup, which was held in Italy.

The Semi-Final Match

The phrase "it's coming home" is starting to become a reality from the point of view of the English fans, as the England team reached the semi-finals for the first time in 18 years, overcoming the disappointments of previous tournaments when it was eliminated in the first round in the 2014 World Cup, and lost 4-1 Against Germany in the World Cup 2010 second round, and it was eliminated against Portugal in the 2006 World Cup quarter-finals by a penalty shootout, and against Brazil in the 2002 quarter-finals by Ronaldinho’s magic.

In addition to all the above, England will face in the semi-finals an "inexperienced" team in the World Cup tournaments, which is the Croatian team.

But Luka Modric's friends managed to beat the England team, eliminate it from the tournament, and break the dreams of the English fans and their famous phrase "it's coming home”.

England lost in that match 1-2 after extra time.

Thus, the World Cup remained far from the homeland of football, and the 2018 World Cup was a new disappointment in a series of disappointments that afflicted the English fans in the continental and international tournaments.