No Kieran Trippier. No Anthony Gordon. No Trophy - England come home empty handed
In what could and indeed should be Gareth Southgate's last game in charge of England, the Three Lions were once again beaten in the European Championships final.
Three years after suffering defeat against Italy, it was this time the turn of Spain to continue Harry Kane's curse of never being able to win silverware no matter how good of a side he plays in.
As has been the tradition on NUFCFeed this last month, you'll no doubt be expecting me to go all in on the Southgate bashing, but you know what? I'm not going to tonight because for once I think he got a lot right.
Opting for Luke Shaw over Kieran Trippier worked superbly, his substitutions worked and were made in good time, except for the late subs, but even then, he did change his plan as he was going to bring on Conor Gallagher for some unknown reason, and instead opted for Ivan Toney.
It's time to move on from Harry Kane
What he didn't get right is sticking with Harry Kane who, despite going into the game as joint top scorer in the tournament, had been woeful all tournament and that continued tonight. What use is a striker who drops deep, plays a great ball forward and then makes no effort to get ahead of the play to take up his position?
It didn't take Spain long at all to make an impact in the second half after a cagey opening 45 minutes by both sides. Nico Williams had Spain 1-0 up within two minutes of the restart.
England looked lost and could easily have been 2-0 down moments later, but Southgate made the call to change things up. Ollie Watkins came on and transformed the game, as did Cole Palmer who scored an outrageous goal to get England level.
However, just as England were in the ascendency and got their goal, they started to let Spain back into the game and were punished on 86 minutes when Mikel Oyarzabal gave Spain the lead and England an impossible task.
The end of the road for Southgate?
As gutted as I am to see England come up short yet again, I am taking some hope forward that this is now the last tournament we will see Gareth Southgate in charge, and hopefully, the last one we'll see Harry Kane leading the line for England.
I doubt that whoever takes over from Southgate, if indeed he does step down, will go as far as to not pick Kane going forward, but surely they will not rely on him as a lone striker.
Personally, I'd keep the cursed git miles away from tournament football unless he's managed to bag a couple of trophies with Bayern Munich before then.
Kieran Trippier didn't even get a kick in the final after starting every game leading up to it, which is pretty shocking, and the less said about Anthony Gordon's tournament the better. Nobody needs to add to the pain they're already feeling.
By the way, we now live in a world where Joselu and Ayoze Perez have European Championship winners medals.
