There was not a single England player who deserved this harsh defeat, not one.
But the man you really had to feel for was Harry Kane, the vanquished captain, the man whose penalty miss means England are heading home. No wonder there were England fans in tears immediately after he put that fateful spot-kick into the stands.
It will take some steel, some resolve, some spirit, for Kane to get over this quickly. But you know what? That is what he will do, because on the night he actually equalled Wayne Rooney ’s England goals record, he could still stand tall.
Was he to blame? Of course. Anyone who misses a penalty is culpable. But like every England player, he battled with every last drop for the cause.
Not that Kane will look back on the tournament as a whole as a good one for him. When it became clear it was extremely unlikely he would retain his World Cup golden boot, everyone said the right things about Kane.
He was a team player, he was making assists, he was a great leader, he was the man to turn to if you had any problems in the camp. Selfless, a leader by example, a true captain. Which are all, no doubt, perfectly true but Kane’s main currency should always be his goals.
The dropping deep, the link-up play are all well and good and do create space for others, hence the variety of England scorers in this tournament.
But his job is to score goals at a prolific rate - and dispatch penalties in the way he did after Bukayo Saka had bought one from the outstretched leg of Aurelien Tchouameni.
No-one dispatches penalties quite like Kane, who never looked unsure of beating his team-mate Hugo Lloris. Kane will be closing in on his 33rd birthday when the next World Cup kicks off and there is a school of thought that thinks there will soon come a time when he should pass on the armband.
Rightly, Southgate has considered Qatar 2022 the time to give the young, gilded generation its head. Players such as Saka, Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden are, obviously, the future of this England team, the future that stretches beyond Kane’s time. And perhaps someone closer to that generation should be given a shot.
Declan Rice would be an obvious successor at some point and was his usual all-action self against the French, albeit being skinned by Kylian Mbappe before the opener from Tchouameni.
Before Bellingham takes the mantle, Rice must surely be the next cab off the rank. And perhaps Kane might get another lease of life and take his game to even greater levels without the burden of captaincy.
He will certainly want to establish a scoring record that no-one will beat and if he was a touch more selfish, perhaps the number could be even higher than it is inevitably going to be. But as this performance showed, selflessness is tattooed onto Kane’s game.
Also, it is hard to overstate how much passion and pride he brings to the England captaincy role. He was a leader of men in the Al Bayt Stadium and the way he linked with Saka in particular was first-class.
And he was unlucky not to earn a penalty from the less than generous Wilton Sampaio in. The first half. Kane complained but not in the histrionic way that we have seen on these past few days.
He just got on with igt and when the time came, struck to equal the Rooney tally. Alas, when the chance came to surpass it and ensure the time went into extra-time, he blew it.
It was as surprising as it was sickening but Kane has no cause to apologise. He has led England with distinction again and should hold his head high.
