By kickoff, the Stadio Olimpico was glowing beneath the floodlights.
The sound hit England as soon as they emerged from the tunnel.
Ling looked around as the teams lined up and felt something he had not experienced during the previous four matches.
Distance.
At Wembley, almost every major moment had been amplified by an overwhelmingly English crowd.
Rome felt more neutral, more detached from the emotional bubble England had inhabited since the tournament began.
Ling liked it.
Knockout football was supposed to make you uncomfortable.
"Good evening from Rome!" Peter Drury began, his voice rising above the stadium noise. "England have left Wembley, England have left home, and now they have come to the Eternal City with a European Championship semifinal waiting ninety minutes—or perhaps rather longer—away!"
Jim Beglin immediately added the warning.
"The danger tonight is obvious, Peter. England have just experienced one of those huge emotional victories that can make the next opponent feel smaller than they really are. Ukraine will love that if England allow it. Shevchenko's team are organized, technically capable, and they have absolutely nothing to lose."
Drury's tone sharpened.
"Germany are gone. The celebration is gone. The quarterfinal is here."
"England against Ukraine."
"One of them returns to Wembley for the semifinal."
"One of them goes home."
The broadcast moved to the starting lineups.
England (4-2-3-1):
Goalkeeper: Jordan Pickford
Defenders: Kyle Walker, John Stones, Harry Maguire, Luke Shaw
Midfielders: Declan Rice, Jordan Henderson
Attacking Midfielders: Raheem Sterling, Mason Mount, Jeremy Ling
Forward: Harry Kane
Ukraine (4-3-3):
Goalkeeper: Georgiy Bushchan
Defenders: Oleksandr Karavaev, Illia Zabarnyi, Mykola Matviyenko, Vitaliy Mykolenko
Midfielders: Serhiy Sydorchuk, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Mykola Shaparenko
Forwards: Andriy Yarmolenko, Roman Yaremchuk, Viktor Tsyhankov
Beglin studied the shapes as the graphic disappeared.
"England have gone back to the attacking structure they're comfortable with. Kane leads the line, Ling starts from the left but obviously won't stay there, Sterling provides the threat on the opposite side, and Mount has to make sure he doesn't crowd the same spaces when Kane drops."
"Ukraine's midfield is the interesting part for me. Zinchenko will not simply stand in one position. If England lose track of him when he moves, Ukraine can play through them."
The camera moved along the England lineup.
Pickford.
Walker.
Stones.
Maguire.
Shaw.
Rice.
Henderson.
Sterling.
Mount.
Ling.
Kane.
The noise climbed again when Ling appeared on the screen.
For a player whose entire senior England career before this summer consisted of only a few friendlies, his first major tournament had already become extraordinary.
Beglin nevertheless sounded a note of caution.
"Everyone is going to talk about Ling after the Germany hat-trick, and rightly so, but I'd be very surprised if Ukraine give him the same spaces Germany eventually did. They'll want bodies around him before he can face goal."
Drury responded immediately.
"And that has been the challenge throughout this tournament. Croatia tried it. The Czech Republic tried it. Germany succeeded for more than an hour."
A pause.
"Eventually, all three discovered that keeping Jeremy Ling quiet and stopping Jeremy Ling are not quite the same thing."
...
Online, the conversation was already moving almost as quickly as the broadcast.
📱 @ThreeLionsTalk
Germany was incredible. Forget it now. Ukraine are the only team that matter tonight.
📱 @UkraineFootball
Everyone outside Ukraine seems to have England in the semifinal already. Good. Let them.
📱 @UnitedStand
Ling has seven goals and somehow I'm still nervous every time England play. International football is terrible for my health.
📱 @EuroTactics
Watch Zinchenko. England cannot become so obsessed with Ling-vs-Ukraine that they ignore Ukraine's best route through midfield.
📱 @WembleyWatch
Win tonight and England come home for the semifinal. Ninety minutes first.
📱 @LiverpoolWatch
Supporting Ling remains deeply uncomfortable, but I have survived four matches and will endure another!
...
On the pitch, Ling looked across at Yaremchuk while the teams prepared for kickoff.
Ukraine's striker was physically imposing enough that Maguire and Stones would have no easy evening.
Yarmolenko was positioned to the right but would inevitably move inside onto his stronger left foot, while Zinchenko was already talking constantly to the midfielders around him.
There was nothing glamorous about the problem England faced.
Ukraine were not Germany.
That did not make them easier.
Sometimes playing an opponent with less individual quality was actually more awkward because the match developed around completely different questions.
Germany had wanted control. Germany had pressed. Germany had repeatedly pushed players high enough that England eventually found space behind them.
Ukraine had no obligation to offer the same opportunities.
If they decided that the first twenty minutes should contain nothing more adventurous than disciplined possession and safe defensive distances, England would have to create the openings themselves.
That required patience.
Ling had spent enough years facing compact Premier League defenses to understand what impatience did to an attacking team.
You began forcing passes that were not there.
You dribbled into two defenders because the crowd wanted something to happen.
You pushed another midfielder forward.
Then another.
Eventually one turnover became a counterattack and everyone wondered how a match they had supposedly dominated had suddenly gone wrong.
Southgate had repeated the warning all week.
Tonight, England needed to control themselves before they could control Ukraine.
BEEP!
The referee blew his whistle.
Yaremchuk knocked the ball backward.
The quarterfinal began!
...
Ukraine's intentions became clear almost immediately.
They were not interested in charging forward.
Zabarnyi and Matviyenko circulated possession patiently across the back, with Sydorchuk offering himself in front of them while Zinchenko repeatedly changed his position depending on where England's pressure came from.
Sometimes he dropped almost beside Sydorchuk.
Sometimes he moved toward the left.
Occasionally he advanced behind Mount and forced Rice to decide whether following him would create too much space elsewhere.
England pressed.
But carefully.
Kane directed the first movement rather than sprinting blindly toward whichever defender possessed the ball.
Mount stayed close enough to Sydorchuk to discourage the simplest central pass, while Ling and Sterling positioned themselves so that Ukraine's full-backs could receive without being given an easy route forward afterward.
For the opening five minutes, Ukraine kept the ball surprisingly well.
The England supporters inside the stadium became slightly restless.
Southgate did not, neither did Ling.
Possession was not the same thing as threat.
Ukraine were moving the ball.
England were deciding where.
"Ukraine have settled very nicely," Beglin observed. "But England won't mind most of this. The ball is moving from center-back to full-back and back again. The question is what happens when Zinchenko or Shaparenko receives facing forward."
Drury picked up the rhythm.
"England wait. Ukraine probe. The quarterfinal begins as a game of patience."
...
By the ninth minute, Ukraine still had slightly more of the ball.
Their circulation was clean.
Their spacing was disciplined.
Their progression was far less convincing.
Whenever Zinchenko attempted to receive centrally, Henderson or Rice quickly reduced the space around him.
Yarmolenko had twice moved inside from the right but found Shaw and Maguire prepared for the movement, while Yaremchuk had barely touched the ball with his back to goal.
The passing therefore continued sideways.
Karavaev.
Zabarnyi.
Matviyenko.
Mykolenko.
Back inside.
Then across again.
Technically, there was nothing wrong with it.
Tactically, it had yet to hurt England.
Ukraine needed someone to change the geometry of the match.
A winger beating his defender could do it.
A midfielder carrying through pressure could do it.
Yaremchuk winning a direct ball and bringing the runners around him into play could do it.
So far, none of those things had happened.
Ling watched from England's left and gradually began recognizing the rhythm.
Ukraine were using possession partly as defense.
As long as they had the ball, England could not attack.
That was reasonable.
The danger came if they became too comfortable with harmless possession and forgot what happened when they lost it.
Sterling had space waiting behind Mykolenko.
Ling could see another channel between Karavaev and Zabarnyi whenever Ukraine's right-back advanced.
Kane had already started drifting away from the center-backs occasionally, testing whether either would follow.
The opportunities were not open yet.
They were beginning to take shape.
...
Ling breathed deeply as another Ukraine pass travelled backward toward Matviyenko.
Four matches into his first major international tournament, he had already experienced almost every kind of defensive attention.
Croatia had tried to control the spaces around him.
The Czech Republic had compressed the middle and made him create from deeper positions.
Germany had surrounded him aggressively and denied him room until their pressing structure finally weakened.
Ukraine were attempting something different again.
That was the part he enjoyed.
Football at this level was a sequence of problems.
The players who survived longest were usually the ones who kept finding new answers.
His scoring numbers attracted most of the attention, but Ling had never thought of finishing as simply kicking accurately toward goal.
The difficult part was recognizing when the chance was forming before everyone else saw it.
Sometimes that meant a run.
Sometimes a pass.
Sometimes doing absolutely nothing for several seconds because moving too early would destroy the space you wanted.
Ukraine circulated the ball once more.
Ling watched, waited and began to see where the first crack might appear.