England fell in love with this team but Spain serve up bittersweet ending | Jonathan Liew

The Lionesses lose the battle of ideas but good things can come of this defeat: new strategies, fresh blood, realistic expectations

We still love you; come home. Like all good travel romances, perhaps England’s 2023 World Cup was always destined to end in cold tears and bittersweet fragments of memories, the smell of reality wafting through the curtains. There will be no shame in losing to a superior Spain side, no recriminations or burning effigies for a group of players who left every piece of themselves on the Sydney pitch.

But regrets? They’ll have a few. Moments that broke the other way, decisions they wish they could take back, and above all the opportunity to create something beautiful and monumental together, for everyone, for ever. They are still European champions and nothing can touch the colossal sugar rush of that Wembley triumph. For another four years at least, however, the circle remains incomplete.

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