England ended 55 years years of hurt by finally beating Germany in the knock-out stages of an international football tournament, edging the visitors 2-0 in the last 16 clash at Wembley on Tuesday evening.

       Raheem Sterling scored his third goal of the Euros to give his country the lead in the second half, before captain Harry Kane headed home shortly afterwards to double the scoreline.

       The reaction to the historic win was unsurprisingly jubilant in the British press, with many papers writing about the “dream-like” quality of the victory.

       While the Daily Express assured readers that “it wasn’t a dream”, the Daily Mirror’s splashed with the headline “Time to dream”. And the Guardian brought a more poetic approach to the same theme with the caption, “Like emerging from a dream into a strange new light”.

       The Sun and the Financial Times were among those who marked the occasion with a pun. The former chose to celebrate with the words “55 years of hurt never stopped us Raheeming”, while the latter opted for the more understated “Sterling effort”.

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       Elsewhere, the Daily Mail went for “By George, we did it!” above a picture of the young prince, who was at Wembley with his parents to watch the game. It praised the national team for a “superb display of resilience and perseverance”.

       The newspapers also looked ahead to the rest of the tournament, assessing England’s chances of becoming European champions.

       The Daily Mirror struck an upbeat tone in its sports pages with “It’s coming Rome”, a reference to England’s upcoming quarter final against Ukraine in Italy’s capital.

       The Times wrote that England are now the favourites to win the competition, describing Tuesday’s result as “sweet revenge” for manager Gareth Southgate, whose penalty miss in the semi-final of Euro 1996 handed victory to Germany.

       The paper added that the 2-0 triumph was the “dream result”, which amounted to a victory “not just over old enemies, but a persistent neurosis”.

       Over in Germany, the country’s press wrote that Tuesday’s match was a bad way for national manager Joachim L？w to end his ultra-successful 15 years in the role.

       “Just deeply sad,” was the headline chosen by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, while the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said the loss marked the end of a period of “self-deception” about the team’s strength.

       The Express, a tabloid based in Cologne, took a different approach by addressing England fans and congratulating them on the performance.

       “Dear Engl？nder, with a deserved win you got back your Wembley stadium from us and ended the great era of Joachim L？w. You had the guts that we didn’t. Good luck for the rest of the Euros. Your Krauts,” it wrote.