England won a penalty shootout. Wait, what?

England advanced past Colombia in the World Cup on Tuesday, when they won a penalty shootout 4-3 after the match was tied 1-1 after regular time.

The match was a bit testy early on, as referee Mark Geiger lost control of the ... wait a minute. Wait. Hold on. England won a penalty shootout? ENGLAND WON AN EFFING PENALTY SHOOTOUT!?

I just slapped myself in the face a few times. Here, here’s the final kick that went in:

Watch it. Watch it again. I’ve watched it 27 times now, and I still don’t believe it. I keep waiting for David Ospina’s hand to be a little stronger on the ball, and for it just to get pushed wide. I keep waiting for Erik Dier to slip and fall, or pull up with a hamstring tweak as he’s shooting, or kick it into Row Z for some inexplicable reason, or for a pack of wild, carnivorous monkeywolves to descend on the pitch at the exact moment of his run up and start trying to eat everyone.

This was England’s history with penalty shootouts in tournaments in the 28 years before this:

Yes, they won a shootout against Spain in Euro 1996, but then they went on to be eliminated in that same tournament by Germany in a shootout in the very next round. So if you want to be charitable, they’ve gone 22 years since winning a shootout. (And that was really just the one time.)

This is cats and dogs living together, Charlie Brown connecting to hit a 52-yarder through the uprights before Lucy can yank it away, and whatever other metaphor you want. This just doesn’t happen.

The scuttle in the leadup to this tournament was that England manager Gareth Southgate has had his team working on penalties since March. March! He was going to go out in this tournament, maybe, but it sure as hell wasn’t going to be on penalties.

Despite knowing that, I still wasn’t sure. When Jordan Henderson’s shot was saved by Ospina, I was certain that was it. I’ve seen this movie too many times before for me to be surprised by it.

Colombia would miss one just to get England’s hopes up, then it would come down to England’s final shooter and he’d put the ball into the stratosphere.

Except two Colombia shooters missed — first Uribe, who hit the crossbar, then Bacca, who was denied by Pickford — and then Dier stepped up, and he kicked it, and it was in the back of the net, and people were celebrating, and I was staring at the TV scratching my head and wondering what had happened.

Here, here’s the whole penalty shootout. Have fun. I still can’t believe it’s real.