BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
The referee's third whistle disappeared beneath the roar of Wembley.
For a moment, several German players simply remained where they were.
Hummels bent forward with his hands on his knees.
Kimmich stood motionless near the touchline, staring at the grass, while Neuer slowly walked out of his penalty area and began gathering the teammates nearest to him.
Müller, whose goal had seemed capable of sending Germany into the quarterfinals less than half an hour earlier, looked back toward the scoreboard one final time.
ENGLAND 3–1 GERMANY
There was no argument left.
Germany were out.
England were through.
And Wembley was losing its mind!
"IT IS OVER!" Drury roared as the stadium erupted around him. "ENGLAND HAVE BEATEN GERMANY! THEY WERE A GOAL DOWN, THEY WERE UNDER PRESSURE, AND THEN JEREMY LING TORE THIS MATCH OUT OF GERMAN HANDS!"
"A HAT-TRICK AT WEMBLEY! A HAT-TRICK IN HIS FIRST MAJOR INTERNATIONAL KNOCKOUT MATCH! ENGLAND ARE INTO THE QUARTERFINALS OF EURO 2020!"
Beglin allowed himself a laugh before joining in.
"What a second half from England, Peter. Germany had the better structure for long periods, they scored first, and for sixty minutes they did almost everything they wanted defensively. Then their press began to lose half a yard here and half a yard there, and Ling punished every single one of those spaces."
Drury hardly needed encouragement.
"Germany had controlled him."
"Germany had crowded him."
"Germany had denied him."
"And then, in the space of one extraordinary half, he scored three."
On the pitch, Ling stood near the touchline applauding the supporters.
His teammates were considerably less restrained.
Maguire had both arms around Stones and was shouting something that disappeared beneath the noise.
Mount looked as though he could not stop smiling, while Sancho was still being congratulated for the run and cutback that had created Ling's second goal.
Kane eventually reached Ling and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.
There was no elaborate exchange between them.
Both were breathing too heavily for that, and there was little point trying to hold a conversation while more than eighty thousand people were roaring around them.
The result spoke clearly enough.
England had survived their first knockout match.
Ling had survived his first knockout match for England.
And after falling behind, they had done far more than survive.
...
The contrast with Germany was brutal.
Knockout football offered no consolation for playing well during certain phases or controlling possession for an hour.
One poor stretch could erase everything that had come before it, and Germany had just experienced exactly that.
Rüdiger looked particularly frustrated.
For most of the evening, he had been part of a defensive structure that successfully limited Ling's influence.
Germany had surrounded him, prevented him from receiving freely near the penalty area, and repeatedly forced England to find other routes forward.
Then Ling had scored three times in little more than twenty minutes.
The first came when he attacked the defensive line directly.
The second came because Germany committed too many bodies toward him and left Sancho free.
The third came from half a yard of space outside the penalty area.
Three completely different problems.
Three different solutions.
There was a reason defenders hated playing against attackers like that. You could solve one threat and discover another immediately behind it.
Neuer eventually walked toward Ling as the England players began separating.
The goalkeeper offered his hand.
Ling accepted it.
Neuer had already won almost everything international and club football could offer. Ling had too much respect for him to treat one victory as an excuse to perform for the cameras.
A few yards away, Havertz was waiting as well.
That meeting lasted slightly longer.
For ninety minutes they had been opponents.
Now they were Manchester United teammates again.
Ling pulled him into a brief embrace and said something quietly enough that the microphones could not catch it.
Havertz nodded, looking disappointed but not bitter, before the two separated.
Football could be cruel that way.
One of them went forward.
The other went home.
...
England's players remained on the pitch for several minutes after Germany disappeared down the tunnel.
There was no immediate desire to leave.
The supporters were still singing, and after the tension of the previous two hours, nobody wanted to cut the moment short unnecessarily.
Ling walked toward each side of Wembley, applauding the stands before finally returning toward the tunnel.
He had experienced celebrations like this with Manchester United.
Champions League semifinals.
Finals.
Premier League title victories.
Old Trafford nights when the entire stadium seemed to vibrate beneath his feet.
This felt different.
Not necessarily bigger.
Different.
He had only worn the England shirt a handful of times before the tournament, and two weeks earlier he had still been learning the finer details of Kane's movements and Southgate's pressing triggers.
Now he had scored a hat-trick against Germany in a European Championship knockout match.
International football had stopped feeling theoretical.
...
The mood inside the dressing room was understandably chaotic.
Music appeared almost immediately.
Several players were still shouting over one another.
Maguire looked as though he intended to tell the story of every tackle he had made, whether anyone wanted to hear it or not.
Ling sat down long enough to remove his boots and drink before watching the celebration unfold around him.
He enjoyed it.
He simply did not lose himself in it.
There would be another match.
That was the entire point of winning this one.
Southgate allowed the players a few minutes before finally calling for attention.
The room gradually settled.
He did not attempt some grand speech about history.
England had beaten Germany.
That was worth enjoying.
But they had not won the European Championship.
"Remember this feeling," Southgate told them. "Enjoy it tonight. You earned that. But don't confuse winning a knockout match with finishing the job."
Nobody needed the distinction explained.
Ling had learned the same lesson repeatedly at club level.
A quarterfinal did not care what you had done in the previous round.
Neither did a semifinal.
Neither did a final.
The moment you began admiring the path behind you too much, the next opponent had an opportunity to end it.
...
At the post-match press conference, Southgate was considerably calmer than the celebrations outside suggested.
"The first half developed roughly how we expected," he explained. "Germany made it difficult for us to progress through the middle, and their rotations caused problems whenever they managed to move our midfield. I thought we stayed patient, though, which was important."
He was particularly pleased that England had not panicked after Müller scored.
"That was probably the key moment psychologically. At 1–0 down in a knockout match against Germany, with all the history people attach to this fixture, it would have been very easy for the players to start chasing the game individually. They didn't."
Instead, England stayed with the structure.
Germany continued pressing.
England waited for the distances to widen.
Then Ling equalized.
Once that happened, the entire contest changed.
A reporter inevitably asked Southgate about the hat-trick.
The manager smiled slightly.
"I'm probably similar to José in one respect. I don't think Jeremy needs us telling him every five minutes how good he is."
That drew laughter from the room.
Southgate continued.
"We all saw the goals. The quality is obvious. What pleased me just as much was everything around them. He stayed patient when Germany denied him space, he kept making the right decision when two or three players came toward him, and when the opportunities finally arrived, he was decisive."
The admiration was obvious despite the measured wording.
"He's still relatively new to international football. People sometimes forget that because of everything he's already achieved at club level, but this is his first major tournament. To produce that performance in his first knockout match says a lot about his temperament."
The microphones quickly moved toward Ling.
He looked far less dramatic than anyone who had just scored a European Championship knockout hat-trick was probably supposed to look.
"What do I want to say? Mostly thank you to the supporters. That atmosphere after the equalizer was ridiculous."
A reporter asked whether scoring ever became routine after doing it so often.
Ling shook his head.
"No. I don't think it can. You can score hundreds of goals, but when you actually see the ball hit the net in a match that matters, the feeling is still there. Maybe the celebration changes. The feeling doesn't."
"And the hat-trick?"
"That part was nice too."
The room laughed.
Another reporter immediately asked whether England should now be considered favorites.
Ling gave the question a look that suggested he had expected it.
"We've won one knockout match. That's it. Germany are a great team and beating them means something, but whoever we play next isn't going to give us an extra goal because we beat Germany."
The answer was simple.
England had earned the right to continue.
Nothing more.