In photos: the highs and lows of the Euro 2024 final

It’s 3pm on Sun­day 14^th July 2024. The front of Liv­er­pool Street Sta­tion, in the heart of London’s finan­cial dis­trict, is packed with drunk lads egging each oth­er on to per­form tricks for my cam­era. I’m wear­ing my ​“ruck­sack stu­dio” which is a makeshift pho­to­booth I car­ry on my back to cap­ture por­traits on the streets of the city.

Beer is fly­ing through the air as thou­sands of Eng­land fans pour out of trains bring­ing them in from Essex and the sur­round­ing areas. Foot­ball chants echo between the sky­scrap­ers as they descend into pubs, parks and fan parks dot­ted across the cap­i­tal. I walk through trendy Shored­itch and Old Street, along the canal to Lon­don Fields snap­ping as I go. The crowd becomes friend­lier and more styl­ish as I move through the less cor­po­rate neigh­bour­hoods of east London.

Like many, I’m still not quite sure how Eng­land made it to the Euro 2024 finals. It’s been a stut­ter­ing cam­paign for Gareth Southgate’s Three Lions, with many fans express­ing frus­tra­tion at the stag­na­tion and rigid­i­ty of the Eng­land manager’s tac­tics. A far depar­ture from the South­gate mania that swept the coun­try dur­ing the sum­mer of 2021 and the delayed Euro 2020 cam­paign. Despite it all, every­where I go, there is hope. Belief that final­ly, after near­ly 60 years of pain, foot­ball is com­ing home.

You can hear the crowd out­side Lon­don Fields’ Pub on the Park from over a kilo­me­tre away. Inside the pub and its expan­sive smok­ing area, fans are squeezed in, pre­car­i­ous­ly car­ry­ing pitch­ers of beer to tables. Out­side a cou­ple of thou­sand peo­ple have spilled out onto the streets and into the park. Some have climbed up on fences, cars or trees, hop­ing to catch the cor­ner of the screens in the pub to fol­low the game. Oth­ers have set up their lap­tops in the park and some were just there to soak up the vibe.

A tor­tur­ous 90 min­utes end­ed, once again in defeat. A 73^rd minute equalis­er from Chelsea’s Cole Palmer saw the crowds in the park with jubi­la­tion, putting Eng­land back in the game after Spain’s Nico William’s took the lead with a goal just two min­utes into the sec­ond half. It was, ulti­mate­ly not to be, with Spain’s Mikel Oyarz­a­bal putting a sec­ond goal past England’s Jor­dan Pick­ford in the 86^th minute of the match. An ago­nis­ing­ly close set of chances almost reignit­ed England’s hopes but it was too late and a sec­ond Euro final in a row was lost.

In the after­math of the final against Italy in Euro 2020, which end­ed in a penal­ty shootout, racist abuse was direct­ed at play­ers like Mar­cus Rash­ford, Jadon San­cho and Bukayo Saka. The most extreme Eng­land fans have a rep­u­ta­tion for hooli­gan­ism but there was none of that on the streets of east Lon­don last night.

In its place was the mul­ti­cul­tur­al vibrance that’s at the heart of the city. Peo­ple came togeth­er to have fun, despite their dif­fer­ences — uni­ty and hope fill­ing the air. This time, foot­ball did not come home, but keep dream­ing, because there’s so much beau­ty in it.

For more Euros con­tent, click here.

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