The end of the era show

It may be the end of the year but it’s also the end of some major sporting eras. Alastair Cook signed off amid sun-drenched glory and a tsunami of affection. And surprise, surprise, it has liberated Joe Root to make a team in his own image, playing with brio and bravery. Roger Federer may be capable of one last burst of incandescent brilliance but not much more than that.

Meanwhile, the implacable giants of football and cricket, Germany and Australia, have been brought crashing down to earth. We should relish the schadenfreude now, because renewal will follow quickly, and a new-look young German football outfit looks to be already on the way. They beat Russia 3-0 with a lightning-quick forward line labelled by one paper ‘the moped gang’. Australia might be rubbish at the moment, but an Aussie cricket revival is as certain as a hot day on the Nullarbor plain.

What all this means is that it’s a very happy Christmas for English sports fans. The ceaselessly under-achieving soccer team has, under Gareth Southgate, become one of the best teams to watch in the world. With a relatively small talent pool — only a quarter of Premiership players are English — the likeable Southgate has put together a bunch of young, motivated, ambitious players. They reached the semi-finals of the World Cup and will be in the semis of the Nations League next summer. The years Southgate spent with the under-21s are paying dividends: he knows and likes these players and they like him. In Dele Alli, Harry Kane, Jadon Sancho, Pickford and Stones, Sterling and Rashford, England have the makings of champions. And in Southgate a proper English gent, rather than a hatchet-faced martinet from overseas.