Jordan Pickford saves situation as England beat Switzerland on penalties | Soccer

It was a game too far, long before it drifted in the wake, with excuses, or resulted in a relatively tension-free shootout under the Portuguese sun. It was a match that looked more like an extended call for the season to end, but eventually it was claimed by England. The arrival of Jordan Pickford, who plunged to his right to repel the attempt of Josip Drmic, guaranteed the team of Gareth Southgate to finish an exhilarating campaign on a high level.

They had come to Guimaraes in the hope of winning the first League of Nations, of course, and the bag of bronze medals that awaited them in the locker room would still have the advantage of being an unsatisfactory prize. Still, this team has always celebrated its shootout win – it's getting used to it these days – and, if its offensive attacking game was accompanied by a small bite in front of the goal, this match would have been won at a gallop. In the current state of things, it would tarnish even the enthusiasm of those who were in the stands, a hangover of a difficult season. At least there was no sting in the tail to endure.

He will have offered Southgate a lot to ponder. England should have taken a decisive lead well before halftime, not to mention shots on goal, having dominated from the start, monopolized the ball and dug the opening. They had been very patient with pbading pbades to pull the opponents out of position and exploit the space left behind, but they ended up repeatedly to let them down. Harry Kane, overtaking Manuel Akanji before throwing a sublime first token from a nasty angle, had hit the center of the crossbar less than 100 seconds after the start, making Yann Sommer flat and helpless.

It was an opportunity created from a flash of genius. Subsequently, and all too often, England has been dulled by the expansion. There was much to admire in their final game, their chances being invariably due to the routines inspired by Pickford who slipped a short pbad to Eric Dier or one of the central defenders on the other end. John Stones, still haunted by his unusual mistake against the Dutch, watched from the bench with his hands as Harry Maguire got possession of the ball, turned and wound Remo Freuler without even touching the ball. The Swiss press was much less feverish than that of the Netherlands.

There was a fluid movement across a front line completed by Dele Alli or Jesse Lingard. But the lack of clinical finish was infuriating. Raheem Sterling, brighter than Thursday's semifinal over Kevin Mbabu, cut Kane's shot when he should have scored. When he managed a free kick in the 117th minute, the ball hit the crossbar, the woodwork shook for the fourth time. In between, England has invented ways to let go of everything it has created.

Dele, completely indifferent when he met the glorious center of Trent Alexander-Arnold, would point a head at the bar unnecessarily. This luck comes from a period during which the Swiss have endured a long pursuit of the ball. The patience of England twice incited them to retire in possession of Pickford before resuming their place. Danny Rose, making a cross on the left after another clever move, will later force Fabian Schär to make an attempt to clear the far post, beaten by Sommer. Once again, the ball did not bounce nicely. Sommer's superb stints against Dele and Sterling follow one another quickly once the game is back in the extra half hour, the first new opportunity created by the excellent Alexander-Arnold, and it's no wonder that Southgate has since adopted more position while he looked, perplexed, from the edge of the canoe.

The Swiss were generally more direct, their offensive attacks decorated by Xherdan Shaqiri's touches until he limped off in search of a summer vacation, but Rose had smothered Haris' luck. Seferovic and Joe Gomez, surely a pillar of the future of this camp, had done the same. Remo Freuler. It would be Granit Xhaka who would actually stretch Pickford, the Arsenal midfielder opening his body to direct the ball to shoot to the far corner of the goal, but the goalkeeper would rush to his right and repel his efforts.

Yet, while Swiss opportunities were still sporadic, the English simply did not want to give them the lead they deserved. Given their inability to convert what they created, the VAR system inevitably ended up denying them. Six minutes from the end, after a good build-up on the left, Maguire, Lingard and Sterling, Dele pbaded Ricardo Rodríguez for a pbad from the head to the cross and Callum Wilson, recently launched, disheveled.

The majority in the arena celebrated with enthusiasm, just as relieved by the fact that the threat of extension could have been banned, with the only difference that the VAR system penalizes Wilson's opposition to Manuel Akanji. All these elements generated a new song for the support of England, which had to keep pace with their group, even if it was hardly a consolation.