Chapter 548 - 548

Going down a player left them with little reason to remain conservative.

They were already trailing and needed something from the match, so protecting a narrow defeat accomplished very little.

The remaining defenders pushed higher, Souček became increasingly aggressive with his forward runs, and Schick stayed close to England's center-backs as the Czech Republic began taking far greater risks.

That decision naturally weakened the system they had spent the first half using to contain Ling.

There were simply not enough players left to maintain the same coverage everywhere.

For several minutes, England did not exploit it.

Southgate wanted patience.

Ten-man teams often produced their most dangerous spell immediately after a sending-off because the opposition relaxed, assumed the match was already decided, and allowed the emotional response to outweigh the numerical advantage.

England had already been punished once in this tournament for losing control of the kind of match they were playing.

Nobody wanted a repeat.

The second goal eventually came because the Czech Republic had no choice but to continue pushing forward.

A cross from the right found Schick inside England's penalty area, and his header forced Pickford into a sharp save.

The goalkeeper gathered the ball cleanly, immediately looked up, and saw almost the entire Czech defensive line standing near the halfway line.

Ling was already moving.

Pickford launched the ball long.

The clearance traveled over midfield and began dropping into the enormous space behind the Czech defense.

Ling accelerated.

There were still defenders trying to recover, but the race was effectively decided the moment he reached full speed.

He had spent years terrorizing Premier League and Champions League back lines in exactly this situation.

Asking a tired defender who had just committed numbers forward to catch him across forty yards of open grass was not much of a defensive plan.

Ling reached the dropping ball without needing to break stride, nudged it forward with his first touch, and continued directly toward goal.

Vaclík began advancing.

The nearest defender tried to recover from Ling's right.

Neither arrived in time.

Ling entered the penalty area, waited until the goalkeeper committed his weight, and calmly slipped the ball beyond him into the far corner.

2–0!

The tension inside Wembley disappeared almost instantly.

Ling slowed after the finish and turned toward the England supporters as his teammates arrived behind him.

There was no need for an extravagant celebration.

England had spent most of the evening solving a stubborn tactical problem, and the second goal felt less like a moment of release than confirmation that they had finally taken control.

"England have their second!" Drury said, "and once the Czech Republic left that much grass behind them, there was only one man you did not want chasing the ball into it."

Beglin laughed quietly.

"That is an impossible recovery run for most defenders. Pickford sees it straight away, and Ling does the rest. Once he gets five or six yards to accelerate, you're asking an enormous amount of anyone trying to catch him."

Southgate allowed himself a brief smile before immediately calling for concentration.

There was still time remaining.

The Czech Republic, however, never seriously threatened a comeback.

With ten men and two goals to recover, their attacks became increasingly desperate, while England found it much easier to circulate possession and force them to chase.

Southgate used his substitutions to protect tired legs and give several players minutes without disrupting the overall shape.

Ling remained on long enough to help control the transitions before eventually dropping deeper and allowing England to manage the closing stages almost entirely through possession.

The Czech players continued working.

Nobody could accuse them of giving up.

They simply had too much to overcome.

When the referee finally brought the match to an end, Wembley responded with another enormous roar.

England 2–0 Czech Republic.

Three matches.

Two victories.

One defeat.

Six points.

First place in Group D.

The defeat to Scotland had prevented the group stage from becoming the comfortable procession many supporters expected, but England had responded exactly as Southgate wanted.

They had faced the most organized defensive side in the group, remained patient when the early breakthrough refused to arrive, and eventually found a way through without losing control of the match.

Ling finished the group stage with four goals and an assist from three appearances.

For a player entering his first major international tournament after only a handful of previous England friendlies, the numbers were extraordinary.

More importantly, England were through.

The experimental stage of Euro 2020 was over.

From this point forward, there would be no recovery match waiting three or four days later if something went wrong.

The knockout rounds were next.

...

Under the constant flashes of cameras and the cluster of microphones surrounding him, Ling answered the post-match questions with considerably more calm than he had shown during the celebrations on the pitch.

"For my first major international tournament, I obviously can't complain about finishing top of the group and reaching the knockout stage. We made things harder for ourselves with the Scotland result, but three matches have shown us both what we can do well and what still needs improving."

England's six points had ultimately been enough to secure first place in Group D.

The victory over Croatia had provided an excellent beginning, Scotland had delivered a sharp reminder of how unforgiving tournament football could be, and the 2–0 win over the Czech Republic had restored some of the control England had lost in the second match.

For Ling, those three games had also offered his first genuine education in competitive international football.

Friendlies had introduced him to Southgate's methods and allowed him to begin learning the players around him, but the European Championship was different.

Opponents prepared more specifically, mistakes mattered more, and every match altered the route through the tournament.

Ling had scored four goals and created another across the group stage, but he was far more interested in what England had learned collectively.

"Getting through the group is only the beginning. Nobody came here just to say we reached the knockout rounds. We said before the tournament that we wanted to compete for the trophy, and nothing about that has changed."

There was no wild declaration that England would definitely become European champions.

France, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and several other countries remained capable of ending anyone's tournament on the right night.

England simply believed they belonged among them.

One reporter eventually asked what Ling wanted to say to the supporters who had filled Wembley throughout the group stage.

Ling considered the question for a moment before answering.

"People call the supporters the twelfth man so often that it almost becomes a cliché, but there's a reason the phrase survives. When I think about the matches I remember most clearly from my career, I remember the noise as much as the football. We're fortunate that so many of our games are at Wembley, and I hope they keep giving us that support for as long as we're still in the tournament."

It was not the most polished answer he had ever given, but it was sincere.

Even after years of playing in front of enormous crowds, Ling had never completely lost his appreciation for the people who arranged their lives around football, travelled across the country, spent absurd amounts of money on tickets, and screamed themselves hoarse for players who often never knew their names.

That kind of support made a football career feel considerably less solitary.

...

Later that evening, Ling sat at St George's Park finishing another carefully measured recovery meal and once again confronted one of professional football's most persistent injustices.

Healthy food was rarely the food he actually wanted.

There were only so many creative ways a nutritionist could prepare lean protein, vegetables and carefully calculated carbohydrates before the basic truth became impossible to ignore.

Human beings had spent thousands of years developing an instinctive affection for fat, salt and sugar, while professional athletes were apparently expected to overcome evolution through grilled chicken and discipline.

Ling finished anyway.

The knockout bracket was becoming clear as the remaining groups concluded, and several players nearby had their phones out following the final permutations.

Eventually, the opponent was confirmed.

Germany.

The atmosphere around the table changed immediately.

There were easier names England could have seen on the bracket.

Germany were certainly not one of them.

They had emerged from a brutal Group F containing France and Portugal, and although Joachim Löw's side were no longer viewed with quite the same aura as the team that had won the 2014 World Cup, the squad remained packed with elite players.

Manuel Neuer.

Joshua Kimmich.

Toni Kroos.

İlkay Gündoğan.

Thomas Müller.

Kai Havertz.

Serge Gnabry.

And several others perfectly capable of deciding a knockout match.

Ling knew many of them very well.

Havertz was his Manchester United teammate, while he had faced the likes of Neuer, Kimmich, Müller and Kroos repeatedly in European competition.

That familiarity removed some of the mystery surrounding Germany, but it certainly did not make them less dangerous.

If anything, Ling knew too much about what they could do.

England's history with Germany immediately guaranteed that the match would become one of the biggest stories of the round.

Newspapers did not need much encouragement before revisiting penalty shootouts, tournament eliminations, Wembley, Italia '90, Euro '96, and every other piece of baggage accumulated across decades.

Ling had no personal connection to most of it.

He had not been alive for many of those matches, and he saw little value in pretending an old England defeat somehow belonged to him merely because he now wore the shirt.

What mattered was the Germany waiting for them now.

And that Germany was dangerous enough without importing ghosts from thirty years earlier.

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Damn, we cant even win against 10 man city in OT... are we cooked? i guess i'm gonna find another manunited fic to cope