Portugal - 0 England - 0/Portugal won 3-1 on pens: England Go Home. The Remake. You've seen it all before. The hype. The expectation. The wooden performances. The fall of the golden boy. The climactic penalty scene as clichéd now in its own way as a car chase. The script always adheres to strict convention. England lose in the end. Brave, stout and inadequate yeomen slain by foreign arrows.
So. Another flop for which the studio will blame the director. Production costs were high on this one and for a studio without a hit in 40 years the realisation may be dawning that there may not be a director out there capable of making anything coherent out of what he gets handed on the backlot of the Premiership.
If there is such an auteur he'll probably be staying with Portugal after this World Cup. Luis Felipe Scolari has said that his wife and 14-year-old son would be reluctant to leave Lisbon, a city in which they speak the language, know the culture and have their privacy respected. That's good news for Portugal who have seen a team of largely ordinary talents and no decent striker reach first a European final and now a World Cup semi-final.
It will be forgotten in the drama and the tears which Beckham alone has produced since Saturday that Portugal were there for the taking. Without Deco and Costinha they were shorn of their best creative player and their best defensive midfielder . They made no big drama of the absences and played as if it were business as usual but the paucity of attacking ideas would have been punished by any side more accomplished than England.
Unfortunately England lined out again with just one striker. It is questionable if Wayne Rooney was ever truly fit for this tournament but certain that he was never fit enough and never cut out for playing the role of the solitary attacker.
Deprived in every game he has played here of decent balls he finally latched onto a couple which unfortunately for England were hanging between Ricardo Carvalho's legs. The red card which followed was merited and redolent of Beckham's in St Etienne eight years ago in that there will be undoubted fallout in the domestic game next season.
By the time of Rooney's banishment Beckham had already delivered his own lines in the great English soap opera. Replaced by the excellent Aaron Lennon the England captain sat on the bench distraught, reflecting surely on a spent international career which though spangled with a handful of glorious moments has been more notable for the conspicuousness of its failures.
His limitations were exposed early on, not by the Portuguese but by a comrade. The Portuguese cut down the right and it took an exemplary tackle by Steven Gerrard to cut out the movement before it culminated in a cross. Gerrard rose to his feet, livid and pumped, shaking his fist and inquiring of those who work the right flank, namely the old pals, Beckham and G Neville, just where the hell they were.
It was that sort of game. Scolari, as usual didn't do what was expected and left Figo out on the wing. The great man's pace is gone but in the early stages he and Ronaldo forayed nicely out wide but Portugal lacked a playmaker as badly as England did and, as time wore on, the game's considerable tension was ratcheted by the possibility of a catastrophic mistake rather than hope of a divine intervention.
Without a howler being committed neither side was going to score if they played on through this week. England's Owen Hargreaves sat well as a defending midfielder and as a firm favourite of Eriksson's it was always likely that he was going to get the call over the more creative Michael Carrick.
Which was a pity. Hargreaves' excellence in the negative arts didn't compensate England for ignoring the alternatives. Another player up front with Rooney or a passer in place of Lampard. Unwittingly the theadbare nature of Eriksson's tactical thinking was shown up when Lennon arrived in.
The young Spurs player was inventive and lively and brought a much needed smattering of pace to the proceedings. He showed enough, every time he played here, to suggest that he should have been starting games.
Portugal had a similar dimension to their play in Ronaldo and had a similar problem also in that once the trickery was done there was nobody to put the ball in the net. All of which made the endgame of penalties somewhat inevitable.
It was here that England came into their own. Lampard had been playing like a man who couldn't hit a barn door with a shovel - his penalty continued the nightmare. Gerrard looked like a nervous schoolboy walking up to take his. Carragher, introduced a minute before the end of extra-time, so that England might benefit from his deadly penalty skills had to retake and saw his second attempt saved.
So it fell to Cristiano Ronaldo to tuck away Portugal's fourth spot kick to secure the win. No doubt for his peripheral part in Rooney's dismissal and for the penalty he will be pilloried next season but the smile which lit his face just then was a joy to behold.
Portugal roll on. Afterwards Felipe Scolari paid tribute to England's doughtiness "They played a wonderful match with 10 men and we have to congratulate them. The penalties are always a lottery. I want to value the attitude of the English players. It looked like 11 against 11."
The future is Portugal's to dream about though. "Portugal can be world champions because we are through to the semi-finals. There is just one game left to the final. We will be ready in the semi-finals. Now that the emotions have cleared, we are in the last four and will take on whoever will be coming. We will be ready."
SUBSTITUTES
ENGLAND: Lennon for Beckham (51 mins), Crouch for Joe Cole (65 mins), Carragher for Lennon (118 mins). Subs Not Used: Campbell, James, Bridge, Jenas, Carrick, Downing, Carson, Walcott.
PORTUGAL: Simao for Pauleta (63 mins), Viana for Tiago (74), Postiga for Figo (86 mins). Subs Not Used: Paulo Ferreira, Caneira, Ricardo Costa, Quim, Boa Morte, Nuno Gomes, Paulo Santos.
Referee: H Elizondo (Argentina)
