English tears flow into a carpet of plastic pint cups

Tom Watling spent the day at Newcastle fan zone as 2,000 optimistic Geordies sung to the tune of another finals defeat

- Tom Watling

The England fans left as suddenly as they arrived, sodden with beer and soured by defeat. It happened again.

For seven glorious hours, reality had been put on pause in the Newcastle fan zone, where 2,000 Geordies had turned up to cheer on the Three Lions as they took on Spain in the Euro 2024 final. The city was enraptured, inebriated, momentarily elated, locked in, everything else forgotten.

Then Spain scored for a second time and the referee blew his whistle, and the reality of life as an English football fan came rushing back.

“I’m gutted,” said 22-year-old Craig, as a man behind him wept into his girlfriend’s arms, surrounded by hundreds of cracked plastic pint cups.

“We’ve gotta move on from [Gareth] Southgate,” his friend Daniel, 22, added. “We’ve done well, we’ve done so well, but we gotta move on.”

The doors opened at 3pm. Two hours later, the open air venue was full, the fans having flooded in as early as possible to jostle for position in front of the huge flatscreen. The queues for the bars lining either side of the venue were never-ending.

This was the best and the worst of England.

It was 2,000 people singing Neil Diamonds’s “Sweet Caroline”. It was rainbow-coloured beach balls bouncing through clouds of vape smoke. Vuvuzelas ringing like tinnitus in everyone’s ears.