Harry Edward Kane can hardly hear himself when the TV microphones are held under his beard on these special days after the final whistle: In the same stands, more and more spectators are singing like a throat that football is just coming home and how cute Caroline is.
The team captain of the "Three Lions" (and the Tottenham Hotspurs) doesn’t skimp on pathos. He classified the 2-0 win over the German selection in the round of 16 as an “unbelievable moment for us as a team and as a nation”. And after the never-ending semi-final against Denmark on Wednesday, he even spoke of one of the proudest moments in his life. “A finale. At home. What a feeling!"
Even Gareth Southgate, the otherwise dust-dry manager of the English team, can now be carried away with moving words.
25 years after his miss in the penalty crime thriller, which decided the EM semi-final against Germany at the same point, the football teacher from Watford would like to see a momentum in "football evenings like this" that can "bring everyone even closer together".
In the spirit of the film director Stephen Fry, who after the disturbing “Nail-Biter” said of the Danes: “Football is irrelevant.
Until it matters. "
Ambitions and desires
So there it is again, this very special exuberance that so likes to manifest itself in this place.
When the British sporting nation looks at London's Wembley Stadium, it takes for granted that it is a major event.
How else could you fill an arena with almost 90,000 seats in the northwest of the spoiled metropolis?
And if you can still win, whether in football, rugby or any other sport, it can of course only have been a great, even historic, moment.
Wembley is not just a multi-purpose arena these days, where the final of the 16th European Football Championship will take place this Sunday (9:00 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the European Football Championship, on ZDF and on MagentaTV).
She is the permanent address of all ambitions and longings that have always been associated with sport in the Kingdom.
Creating something to make the world aware of it: that was what drove Edward Watkin.
The proud railroad tycoon wants to set up an amusement park in the inconspicuous borough of Brent at the end of the 19th century in order to generate more activity on his Metropolitan Line.
A tower is to be erected in the middle, higher than the Eiffel Tower.
"Everything that Paris can do, London can do even bigger," Watkin is convinced before he fails due to financial difficulties.
After all, a year before the British Empire Exhibition (1924 to 1925), no record building was built, but a gigantic stadium with two white towers.
The Londoners quickly take it to their hearts as "The Twin Towers" or "The Venue of Legends".