Over the course of a gruelling, nerve-shredding Euro 2024 quarter-final in Dusseldorf, Bukayo Saka covered 13.26km, but then came one final test: the lonely walk from the halfway line.
It was only 35 metres or so towards the edge of the penalty area, but that walk has been known to send the most experienced, battle-hardened players into turmoil, gripped by dark thoughts and fear of what might happen if they miss.
“It takes around 20 to 30 seconds to cover the ground between the centre circle and the penalty spot,” Frank Lampard once said, reflecting on a missed penalty in England’s World Cup quarter-final defeat by Portugal in 2006. “It’s amazing the amount of thought you can cram into such a short period when all you want to do is block out the world.”
“It felt like 40 miles,” Steven Gerrard said of his miss in the same shootout. “The pressure of the situation — knowing that your whole country depended on you and that a billion people around the world were watching you — ate away at me.”
Saka had taken the walk before. And he knew, like Gerrard, Lampard and so many other English players from the past few decades, how it felt to carry the nation’s hopes on his shoulders and then to feel the responsibility when that burden comes crashing down.
Saka on that lonely walk to the penalty spot (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
These games, as England manager Gareth Southgate said afterwards, “aren’t normal matches. They’re national events with huge pressure and really young men in the middle of it”.
Cole Palmer, 22, and Jude Bellingham, 21, had already stepped up and scored. But for Saka, 22, the experience of having been in this situation with England previously added to the burden, rather than making it lighter.
Saka was only 19 when, with England trailing Italy 3-2 in a penalty shootout at the last European Championship final, he was entrusted with their fifth kick and the opportunity — or, rather, the duty — to score and keep his nation’s flickering hopes alive.
On that occasion, Gianluigi Donnarumma’s save secured the trophy for Italy and prolonged England’s decades of misery on the international stage. Saka looked inconsolable on the lonely walk back. “I was hurting so much and I felt I had let you all and my England family down,” he said on Instagram a few days later.
Then there was the appalling racist abuse that Saka and his team-mates Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho received on social media after missing their penalties. He spoke of knowing “instantly the kind of hate I was about to receive”.
On Saturday evening, after 120 minutes of football could not separate England and Switzerland, Saka took the walk again. Three years older, three years wiser, but in that moment there is vulnerability to every player, particularly to one who has lived through the ugly, painful fall-out of an unsuccessful penalty at a critical moment for England.
“Last time we had a penalty shootout at the Euros, we know what happened,” Saka told reporters afterwards, having been presented with UEFA’s player of the match award.
“It’s something I embrace. You can fail once and you have a choice over whether you put yourself in that position again. I’m a guy who’s going to put myself in that position. I believed in myself.”
He scored, sending Switzerland goalkeeper Yann Sommer one way and the ball into the opposite corner.
Saka converts his penalty (Hesham Elsherif/Anadolu via Getty Images)
He smiled, stuck his tongue out and cupped his ears to the England fans behind the goal. It was a special moment, taking Saka and his team-mates another step closer to a semi-final against the Netherlands.
“I gave him a massive cuddle on the pitch,” Southgate said when asked about Saka afterwards. “He’s a special boy, a dream to work with, with a wonderful family. Of course you’re pleased for everybody, but for him especially when his penalty goes in.”
That sense of happiness for Saka will have been shared by many up and down the country. It has felt over the course of Euro 2024 as if the English public’s affection for Southgate and his players isn’t quite what it was during the first three tournaments under his management, but Saka seems to be an exception; people love his skills and his persistence as well as the smile and the personality that shines through.
Saka had not had an easy start to the tournament. He was substituted in all three group games without making much impact in a creative sense, but he excelled against Switzerland in an unfamiliar role, with the switch to a three-man central defence meaning he had responsibility to cover the whole of the right wing.
Esri Konsa celebrates progress with Saka (Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images)
“His all-round performance was exceptional,” Southgate said. “The detail of how he had to defend and track back and be in the right positions was very complex down that side of the pitch. Then to give us the outlet, in those one-against-one situations, which we felt could be a real advantage for us… his performance was immense.”
Saka always looked England’s most likely source of inspiration in the first half, welcoming the opportunity to link with Kobbie Mainoo and Phil Foden on that side of the pitch. It was clear he had the beating of Michel Aebischer. All of England’s best moments came from Saka on the right side.
After the interval England fell into one of those strangely listless second-half performances when their sense of control and attacking threat ebb away. When Breel Embolo opened the scoring for Switzerland on 75 minutes, it was hard to see a way back into the game for Southgate’s team, who had totally lost their way.
When a side is misfiring like that, it feels like their only real hope of salvation is through a moment of individual brilliance. Against Slovakia six days earlier, that came from Bellingham. This time it was Saka, cutting in from the right wing and responding to a lack of movement from his team-mates by letting fly from the corner of the penalty area with a low shot that deceived Sommer and curled just inside the far post to level the scores.
Saka curls in England’s late equaliser (Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images)
Beyond that, there was Saka’s commitment to the defensive side of his revised brief, particularly in helping Kyle Walker keep tabs on Ruben Vargas. When England were caught on the counter-attack in the final minutes of extra time, it was the Arsenal player who raced back to his own penalty area to block Silvan Widmer just in time.
“What a performance, playing in a position he’s not used to playing,” England captain Harry Kane said of his team-mate. “He was a real outlet, causing them problems.
“He got the goal he fully deserved with a fantastic finish, which got us back in the game when we needed it, but then without the ball as well, there’s the shift he put in, the blocks, the tackles. Even in the 120th minute.”
Saka’s combination of inspiration and application is rare. It is why he has cemented himself as a must-pick for Southgate in a time where the manager has so many wide attacking players from whom to choose. Like Foden, he is a true team player. He plays without ego.
Prince William, Prince of Wales and FA President, celebrates Saka’s late equaliser (Jean Catuffe/Getty Images)
He is also tougher than that disarming smile might suggest. He withstands some rough treatment from opposition defenders, but he has also had to show resilience to overcome from the trauma that followed Euro 2020. Unlike Sancho — it feels his confidence and career is yet to recover from that heartbreaking defeat by Italy — Saka has gone from strength to strength with club and country.
Saka has kept taking penalties for Arsenal, but his successful kick against Switzerland called to mind another European Championship quarter-final back in 1996, when England faced Spain in a penalty shoot-out and Stuart Pearce, who had missed a crucial penalty in a World Cup semi-final against West Germany six years earlier, stepped up and scored before letting out a cathartic yell.
Saka is a very different character, but Pearce, in Dusseldorf as a co-commentator for talkSPORT, expressed admiration for the strength of character the youngster had shown. “It shows the kid has moral courage,” Pearce said. “If the 11 players or the whole squad have the same moral courage that this boy has, then we’re going somewhere.”
Pearce completes his personal redemption against Spain (Stu Forster/Allsport/Getty Images)
Saka feels they are. He spoke afterwards of wanting to “change our lives and make some history that’s never been made before” with reference to England’s bid to win their first men’s European Championship.
There were times on Saturday when it felt as distant as ever, with time slipping away. But Saka stepped forward to equalise and then stepped up again to score in the shootout. Nothing seems to worry or faze him. He is a delight, a national treasure, the embodiment of all that is good about this England team.
“Love always wins,” he said in response to the hateful abuse he received after that penalty miss at the previous Euros. And having felt so alone on the long walk back three years ago, this time the love from his team-mates and from England’s supporters felt overwhelming.
(Top photo: Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
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