Euro 2024: England Now Is The Time!

In the coming weeks England will kick off their latest Euro Championship odyssey against their initial Group D opponents, Serbia. And as our ever-confident world-class pundits like to assert, It’s a nice and easy little fixture to set us upon the road to eventual glory or our usual path towards the gallant losers’ enclosure. We all like those easy fixtures, don’t we? Anybody remember Iceland? As kick-off draws nearer, we may be cloaked in the heavier regalia of resilience, but I am never wholly convinced that we will not, as is often the case, surrender to the whims of fate where once again our players countenance is a portrait of dignified defeat.  Because lest we forget, the fact that we have turned up at the last three major tournaments and look like a trophy is finally within reach, we have not entirely lost the ability to remind the entire footballing world how to turn wine into water!

But this time … just like the last time and the fifty times before that, I still dream that we might win this thing. Now is the time. I am as English as a Granny Smith apple and have dreamt of that sweet nectar of vengeance and heard the symphony of sanguine satisfaction after our glorious win on penalties, after extra time, against the Germans! Harry Kane lifting the Championship Trophy and simultaneously putting a plague on all the houses of his doubters. And yet that glorious dream remains haunted by the nightmare of more failure. 

WILL IT BE THE SAME OLD ENGLAND?

Now I’m sure there are reasons why England can triumph this summer in Germany, but here is unfortunately other reasons why I fear we won’t. I simply don’t have the room in this column to mention all of them, so I’ll briefly mention just three. France. Germany, and the most significant reason of all …Gareth Southgate.

Prior to Southgate’s arrival at the helm, adorning the offices of the FA along with its hand-painted de Gournay wallpaper is one World Cup and the severed heads of two hundred failed managers plus a book of dismal failures that’s larger than Neil Ruddock! A place for Gareth Southgate’s head has already been prepared should he come up short again. Apparently, he got the space reserved for Sam Allardyce! The boy has done some good, but the winner’s enclosure remains a complete stranger to him. Should this tournament end in another dismal failure Gareth can be assured that he will be long remembered as England’s most successful, unsuccessful manager!  But who knows. It might not damage his future employment prospects because should his severed head join the aforementioned, he can probably look forward to a brief career at Manchester United, a club that simply cannot loosen its embrace with mediocrity.

Southgate’s innate cautiousness, and hand-break style of management have been cited regularly as reasons for England failures. For example, will he allow Bellingham the free reign that has made him the stand-out player in La Liga this season? Probably No. Will Foden be allowed to drift from left to right. I doubt it.  But a closer look at the squad without rose-tinted spectacles reveals a few other flaws that might damn him. Firstly, I have never been convinced that Jordan Pickford is a good enough goalkeeper at this level. A perennial relegation dodger, his position is rarely discussed in any depth and is routinely glossed over. Obviously, the pundits don’t find it sexy enough to indulge in goalkeeping niceties. Southgate, as we know, places more faith in players who have performed well in the past then he does on current form. Expecting players who struggle to get into their respective club’s first eleven to show up and instantly perform at this level is a fool’s errand.  And I won’t mention our traditional, major tournament defending, which for this, and all other major tournaments, has been honed into its usual false sense of security during a qualifying campaign which sees our, world-class heroes demolish half-a-dozen various versions of the Dog & Duck.

The centre back pairing of Stones and Maguire isn’t going to give any decent striker sleepless nights. Indeed, McGuire has been on the scrapheap more times than my grandad’s Cortina. Thankfully, it does look he has learned from something from three consecutive failures. After naming his provisional squad, Southgate has sensibly jettisoned Jordan Henderson who is simply not as good as those with whom he must compete for a place. Likewise, Marcus Rashford will be given the summer off. I think this is mainly because, apart from being poor all season, he is a player who still hasn’t fully embraced one of the basic tenants of football in that once you lose possession of the ball you have a responsibility to your teammates to try and win it back. Southgate described his omission as a very difficult decision one that is right up there with deciding whether to put one or two sugars in your coffee.  As July approaches, Southgate does have some excellent players at his fingertips.  Kane, Saka, Stones, Foden, Walker, Maddison, Bellingham, Grealish, Palmer, Rice, Sterling etc, but they cannot all play, and my fear is that he will restrict those that do with his caution first approach. He has done this on the last three occasions. Is he really no longer a recidivist as he approaches a fourth?

TWO OLD FOES WILL NEED TO BE VANQUISHED.

France are the clear favourites. They have a squad full to the brim with talent across every position from Griezmann, to their incredible defensive depth where players like William Saliba, Ibrahima Konate and Jean -Clair Todibo , not to mention Axel Disasi and Julkes Kounde that represents a frightening array of defensive talents. Of course, Kylian Mbappe needs no introduction, and Didier Deschamps is a proven winner. But England are more than a match as the proved last time out.

And then there are the Germans. Now nothing in the sporting world feels me with more dread and suspicion than the assertion that Germany aren’t very good. This is akin to insisting that Frank Sinatra couldn’t sing. Germany may be slightly out of tune, but they never forget the score, and they know how the song goes having won this thing on three occasions. They are on home soil, and it has only been a few months since they beat both France and the Netherlands with solid performances. Julian Nagelsmann has plenty of talent to choose from. Jonathan Tah, Kai Havertz, Jamal Musiala, Antonio Rudiger and Ilkay Gundogan et al are just a few reasons for the Germans to be cheerful. Spain, Belgium and the Italians of course are no slouches either.

SO HOW WILL IT ALL END?

Now, I could be wrong, but in my experience, there is only one thing that we can predict with one hundred per-cent certainty at this year’s tournament, same as all the other ones, and that is…it will all end in another near miss, lots of tears, handwringing, bouts of fan violence, recriminations, calls for a chimpanzee to be the next England Manager, we’ve tried everything else at this stage, and a six-month debate as to who should be the next England Captain. Yes indeed, we always get to the important things first! It’s become almost voyeuristic I know, but watching the car-crash that is England’s regular failed attempts to win the next major competition has become one of world sport’s main attractions. We don’t just lose, we’re the world champions of footballing disappointments. Personally, I think this is because whenever you listen to the plethora of over-confident, largely dismissive ex-players, and the usually never kicked a ball in anger, media football pundits, you will always hear these ‘experts’ use the word ‘should’. Should is our footballing default word. We should have beaten Croatia back in 2016. We should have beaten Italy in the previous final and we should have beaten France in the last World Cup. And of course, we should beat Serbia in our opening group game this year. But since 1966 we still haven’t learned that ‘should’ more often than not, turns into ‘can’t.’ followed by ‘and ‘didn’t.’ Maybe, just maybe this time things might be different won’t they and England will reach the holy grail of another trophy. England expects! We have some excellent players who might just deliver the prize if only the manager can loosen the reigns and not get trapped in the usual headlights when that moment arrives for a change of tactics, and to press home the advantage.