The identity shift that has England on the brink of soccer glory

The close calls have gone their way. They have won penalty shootouts. And the heartbreaking late goals have all been scored by guys with the Three Lions on their jersey, not against them. All of which has been as unfamiliar to England fans as tea without milk.

But as the team sits 90 minutes from its first major trophy since 1966, the reason for its radical transformation has become clear. Over the past decade, the England soccer team has undergone what amounts to a wholesale personality transplant.

“We weren’t savvy, we weren’t tournament-wise," England manager Gareth Southgate said before Wednesday’s semifinal victory over the Netherlands. “This group are different."

Nothing underlines those differences quite as starkly as England’s record under Southgate. At the four major tournaments since he took the job, following England’s embarrassing defeat by Iceland at Euro 2016, the Three Lions have now reached two finals. In the nearly seven decades and 23 tournament appearances before his tenure, they had made just one.

Yet the team’s run in Germany hasn’t produced universal acclaim back home. Instead a tortured fan base that has learned to embrace valiant failure (see: Robert Falcon Scott reaching the South Pole in second place or the Three Lions losing penalty shootouts to Germany) has been unsure how to react to an England team that knows how to win ugly. Glorious defeats after brave efforts were familiar. Gritty success through a canny understanding of the task at hand is somehow jarring.

The source of the confusion comes down to this: there is actually something very un-English about modern English soccer.

This isn’t a coincidence. The national team’s rise is the direct result of a quarter-century in which England’s Premier League has become the prime destination for the best coaches from the rest of the world. At clubs such as Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, and Manchester United, the core of the English national team has worked on a day-to-day basis with an international collection of the brightest minds in soccer, including Spain’s Pep Guardiola and Germany’s Jürgen Klopp.

And their influence has bridged the technical and tactical gap that used to exist between English players and their counterparts on the continent. There are now more players in England’s starting lineup that have been coached by Guardiola than there were in Spain’s semifinal lineup. Midfielder Phil Foden, for instance, is the closest thing that England has to a Barcelona academy graduate after spending his formative years being schooled in the Catalan approach at Manchester City—he just happens to be from Stockport.

Southgate clocked that this was happening years ago. And he understood that he needed to make England play more like his European-educated players, not the other way round.

“We’re very fortunate that our young players are playing for [Antonio] Conte, Klopp, [Jose] Mourinho, Guardiola, Arsène [Wenger], top foreign coaches," Southgate said before the 2018 World Cup. “They have been coached at their clubs every day of the week, and given opportunities to play. That has produced young players who can handle the ball."

That thinking has trickled down all the way through England’s youth teams, which have begun winning tournaments across age groups. In 2017, England steamrolled through the Under-17 World Cup, beating Brazil in the semis and then Spain in the final in a 5-2 rout. Three of the England players on the pitch that day—Foden, Marc Guehi, and Conor Gallagher—are in Southgate’s current squad.

Still, for all the talent at his disposal, Southgate’s approach in Germany this summer hasn’t won England a lot of style points. During the group stage, when England drew two of its three games and scored just twice, Southgate was skewered in the British press for building a team that appeared to be less than the sum of its parts.

“We all want to be loved, right?" Southgate said. “When you’re doing something for your country and you’re a proud Englishman and you don’t feel that back, with all the criticism, it’s hard."

As the tournament progressed, however, England gradually came into its own. The team still flirted with classic pratfalls, but this new version of the Three Lions added a new twist: a knack for dramatic comebacks. Never before has a team trailed in each of its Euro knockout games and still reached the final. Yet England pulled it off by finding heroes all over its squad.

Some were expected, such as Real Madrid star Jude Bellingham, who tied the round-of-16 game against Slovakia with a 95th minute overhead kick. Some were deployed in surprising roles, like Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold, who was thrown into the quarterfinal against Switzerland specifically so he could take the potential winning penalty in the shootout. And some seemed to come out of nowhere: Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins had played all of 31 minutes at these Euros before scoring the winner against the Netherlands.

“It shows the more modern England way," Southgate said, “but also the resilience and character of the group."

Write to Joshua Robinson at Joshua.Robinson@wsj.com and Jonathan Clegg at Jonathan.Clegg@wsj.com