England’s gristly Ghana draw exposes limitations of Madueke and Gordon | Barney Ronay

After the high: the comedown. You could probably have seen this coming. If only that rush after half-time in Dallas , where England surged with such alluring creative energy, hadn’t been quite so much of a buzz. It turns out, however, that this is still an England tournament team. Nothing comes easily. The world will not bend to you. We can’t have nice things. Or only some nice things sometimes. By the end watching England struggle in Boston against a grisly and indigestible Ghana was like having your will, hope, sense of fun slowly sucked out of your body through a surgical drainage catheter. The moment that might have been the moment came right at the death. With 86 minutes gone England finally found a strange green substance opening up between the yellow shirts that had jounced and jostled and suffocated them to that point. This, it turns out, was open grass, space, air to breathe. They did something useful with it, Reece James picking out Nico O’Reilly with a fine right-footed cross. His header twanged the bar. The rebound fell to Harry Kane, at a decent height, with space to shoot, the target yawning in front of him. And for a moment the game seemed to stop, the day stretching out. As a kid Kane will have dreamed of place-kicking in this stadium, home of the Patriots, and one of the open, homely old cathedrals of the NFL. …