The World Cup, for me, is over.

Is it true that it’s about the journey and not the destination? I’m pretty disappointed right now but I have to say… yeah, it was.

It was fun watching this England team. (And It was fun watching Belgium, too.) I liked watching Jordan Pickford make some great saves. I liked watching Harry Maguire and John Stones. I liked watching Kieran Trippier step up as wing back (and his goal today was beautiful).

Harry Kane will still probably win the Golden Boot.

Raheem Sterling hasn’t gotten his goal but he was a problem for opposing defenses and that was still great to watch.

I liked Gareth Southgate’s waistcoat. I hope he sticks around as manager.

I could complain about a lot, like how sick I became of the sound “-itch” by the end of the game. I thought Croatia got away with some literal tackles during the game. But the fact is, they outplayed us. We had energy early when we were up 1-0. We should have put at least one more away. We didn’t. That’s how it goes.

The second half was all Croatia. After their equalizer, I thought they would score twelve more. Their midfield was so superior to ours. All that talk of them being tired after all the extra time was irrelevant. They came alive and we had to try to hold on. We made it to extra time, calmed the game down a bit, but then Mandzukic put away a pretty nice goal. And that was that.

I remember being in a bar in 2006 when Italy scored a goal in the second extra time. There was a teenaged kid in there who was rooting for France and he cried. After the Colombia game last week, when England finally broke their shootout curse, I tried to say good game to as many Colombia fans as I could. Exiting the tournament is painful and thirty-one teams have to do it.

Maybe we weren’t challenged enough during the tournament. Maybe Croatia was more battle tested. They’d probably be a pretty cool story if I didn’t hate them so much right now. A country of, like, four million people that’s only been its own country since 1991 playing in a World Cup final? That’s a great story.

But to hell with them. I’ll be rooting for France.

I won’t even be able to watch England and Belgium play one last time in the third place game. I’ll be running a race. It’s probably better that way anyway.

It was a nice run. As I said at the start, England usually do as well as they’re supposed to.

It still would have been nice to watch them in a final, though.

Who needs a pint?