Gareth Southgate looked up at the giant screen at Wembley on Tuesday and saw David Seaman’s face. Even on this joyous day, it took him back. As he said afterwards, he can never escape painful reminders of a day, a kick, 25 years ago — but, for the England manager, this must surely have been the sweetest medicine.

“For the teammates I played with, I can’t change that, that’s always going to hurt, but what’s lovely is that we have given people another day to remember,” the England manager said after a 2-0 triumph over Germany that has raised hopes that Euro ’96 might be gloriously eclipsed this summer.

Surging hope of reaching a Euro 2020 final at Wembley was Southgate’s gift to England and how giddily a country revelled in a victory that he had delivered against quite a few expectations.

Uplifting vindication for Southgate came at Wembley in those goals for Raheem Sterling (“take him off!”) and Harry Kane (“waste of space!”) after a selection that would have lost any popular vote by a landslide.

Amid all the noise (“two holding players, ridiculous!”), he stuck to his methods. He backed Sterling when others would have hauled him off, and has been rewarded with three goals in four matches. He stuck with Kane when most of us would have given up on an England captain who looks off the pace. Who knows now what that goal may do for Kane’s confidence? He was patient with Jack Grealish when the clamour had become deafening. Didn’t that turn out rather well?

“England’s bench is bloody impressive,” as Gary Lineker put it on Twitter, gazing down a list which included Grealish, Phil Foden, Jadon Sancho, Mason Mount and Jude Bellingham.

Although the 43,000 strong crowd at Wembley created a deafening atmosphere once England were in front, Southgate was aware of the perils of getting lost in the buzz ahead of a quarter-final tie against Ukraine in Rome on Saturday.

“It didn’t really need me to say it but when we got in the dressing room, we were talking about Saturday already because today (Tuesday)’s been an immense performance but emotionally and physically at a cost,” Southgate told a news conference.

“We’ve got to recover well, and (make sure) mentally we’re in the right space. It’s a dangerous moment for us. We’ll have that warmth of success... and we know it’s going to be an immense challenge from here on.

“The players know that. Their feet are on the ground, they feel confident from the way they’ve played. But, of course, we came here with an intention and we’ve not achieved that yet.”

England’s win came after Southgate reverted to a three-man central defensive setup, the formation he used when his side reached the semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

The victory also meant that England have reached the last four and then at least the last eight in successive tournaments for the first time since 1970.

“These players keep writing history and they’ve got the chance again — we’ve only ever been to one European Championship semi-final,” Southgate said.

“They’ve got the chance to do something really special and we’ve got to make sure we’ve got a really good chance of doing that.”

‘Dangerous’ side

Captain Kane said England’s remaining rivals at the tournament would consider them a “dangerous” side.

“Any team will look at us and know that we’re dangerous,” Kane said. “There isn’t anything bigger than this when the expectation is on and we delivered, so we should be proud — but we can’t stop here.

“Hopefully we’ll be back here in the semi-finals and the final.”

While the build-up to the match was dominated by talk of historic and bitter tournament losses to Germany, England's focus will now be on making some history of their own.

The visitors’ defeat marked the end of Joachim Loew’s time as Germany coach after 15 years in charge, during which he guided them to the 2014 World Cup title in Brazil.

Defensive midfielder Declan Rice said critics had written off England but Tuesday’s victory had proved them wrong.

“It is history, all the players were asked about the past games but we created history,” Rice said.

“With a full house, everyone had the fire in the belly to one, knock Germany out, and two, progress in the tournament.”

Written with inputs from Reuters