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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, 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 [England manager 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.
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.
It was emptied beer barrels. Booze-drenched flags. A man inexplicably wearing an orange traffic cone on his head. Another man wishing he had a cone on his head. It was Jordan Pickford lovers. Gareth Southgate haters. Penalty enthusiasts. Penalty fearers.
Everyone said the same thing.
“I’m feeling unbelievable” said 24-year-old Kennedy Campbell. “We’re gonna win.”
She and her three mates had managed to get the prime spot right in front of the TV. “I’m not going to work tomorrow. I took the day off, obviously,” she said.
“When we win, we are going out all night. I won’t get home until 8am.”
“I think Spain will score first but England will come back to win 2-1,” said Mark Toole, 35, a few hours later, at half time, when it was still 0-0, when there was still hope. “We’re gonna absolutely f***ing smash it. I’m not nervous. Never.”
“With everything that’s going on with the world right now, it’s mad that every one of us is here as an English man to support our beloved team. We’re gonna bring it home.”
An hour before kick off, four hours after the fan zone opened, the host Keith Downie invited fans to the stage to say a few words.
But within seconds, a man draped in an England flag, his Guinness spilling on his shoes, climbed onto the stage and grabbed the mic.
“I just wanna say this,” he gargled: “Looking back at when we first met …”
It would be 10 minutes until Keith would touch the mic again. The crowd had burst into song, led by the man draped in his home colours. A few hours later, he was staring despondently into space, his England wig sagging atop his head, another pint of Guinness spilling onto his shoes.
There were several spine-tingling renditions of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”. There was The Beatles’ “Hey Jude”, Oasis’ “Don’t Look Back in Anger”. There was, of course, “Three Lions”.
“Before I knew it, there were all these guys fighting over the mic and doing a sing off,” Mr Downie told The Independent later. “They were really good though.”
The rollercoaster of English football is familiar. The first half was uneventful. Everyone was still hopeful. But then came the collective groan after Nico Williams scored for Spain just two minutes after the restart.
There were heads in hands. There were forlorn looks. There were angry gestures.
Then came Cole Palmer with the equaliser. The crowd could feel it coming a few seconds before it happened, somehow. And they erupted into a frenzy as the ball crashed into the back of the net. Pints flew in the air, then rained down on the writhing mass of excited bodies already denuded of their T-shirts.
“We’re gonna win it,” shouted Steven Currie, 24. “We are going to go and f***cking win it!”
But 13 minutes later, his head was, once again, in his hands. This time, the crowd’s collective groan was suffused with swelling anger and bitter disappointment.
It isn’t coming home. Was it ever?
“I really thought we were going to win,” Steven said after the game, as the fans rushed out of the fan zone in their droves.
“But I’ll tell you what,” he said. “F*** the result. We’re going out on the town. We’re getting on one.”
His friend suddenly grabbed him by the neck, slipping on the beer-soaked Astroturf. Then they fled into the night, kicking the broken pint cups around them as they went.
They’ll be back. It’ll be the World Cup before you know it.
