FOR DECADES ENGLAND HAVE BEEN STALKED BY FEAR BUT NOW THERE'S NOTHING TO BE SCARED OF - GARETH SOUTHGATE'S GANG BELONG WITH THE EUROPEAN ELITE, WRITES IAN LADYMAN

Gareth Southgate is set for his second final as England manager on Sunday
The Three Lions have previously feared big moments but are an elite team
LISTEN to It's All Kicking Off! EUROS DAILY: What moment changed the Euros for England?

To chart the final part of English football’s passage from obscurity to relevance, you have to go back to the bowels of Qatar’s Al Bayt Stadium on the night of December 10, 2022.

Al Bayt is so far north of Doha that it’s just about in the desert. The road to reach it seems to stretch for ever and when you get there it just ends. Beyond it is only wilderness.

So it was a fitting location for Gareth Southgate to stand and wonder after England’s World Cup quarter-final defeat by France if his time as national coach had run its course.

Southgate, six years in the post at the time, knew that the tide of public opinion had turned. Where once he had been thanked for breathing new life into an England team that had lived on a diet of failure for years, he was now being accused of holding them back.

That age-old condition called English entitlement had swept through the country once more.

He almost went back then, Southgate. Part of him questioned whether he had the energy to go again, to fight the fight on and off the pitch. Part of him wondered whether a major tournament run of semi-final in Russia, final in London and quarter-final in Qatar was as good as it was going to get.

But then there was another part of him that looked at his squad and looked at what the English academy system may bring him in the next couple of years and it was this that caused him to press pause on the idea of walking away.

That could wait. Southgate saw the talent and the growth potential in the English game and realised that it wasn’t the end of the road he was looking at but a bend. And now it has led us here, to another landmark stadium on the outskirts of Berlin.

Southgate and his players did not expect to get to the final of Euro 2024 in the manner in which they have. England’s football here in Germany has spoken of some of the English game’s traditional ills.

Tiredness, fear, uncertainty. Some habits have been devilishly hard to break. But such is the rich seam of talent from which Southgate is able to mine, England have got here anyway largely on the back of big individual moments.

This is not the way it used to be. It used to be the preserve of other nations. Pre-Southgate, England would arrive at big tournaments like an over-inflated balloon. One touch of a pin to its sensitive outer shell and it would burst, scattering the debris and the stains of over-confidence and hubris all over those wearing white. Back then England always seemed to be less a team and more a jumble of isolated footballers dropped on to a field like dice.

This time England have travelled through a tournament on the back of a refusal to be beaten and a collective will that has grown since they first stumbled from the field following a less-than-convincing 1-0 win over Serbia in Gelsenkirchen on June 16. It has been pretty hard to watch at times but the manner of the journey is no longer important, only the destination.

For far too long, England’s standing in the world and European game was one categorised by under-achievement. For year upon year, the other super-powers of the global game laughed at the English.

In Paris on the night Roy Hodgson’s England fell to their knees against Iceland in the 2016 Euros, they laughed at us in the bars and cafes across the road from the Gare du Nord.

I know because I was there and I heard them. Back then English football had no answers to all of that but now it does. Now it has a back catalogue of proper progress to point to.

On Sunday night in the German capital, England will appear in back-to-back European Championship finals and that is something that only Spain have managed since the tournament was expanded to its modern form from eight teams in 1996.

‘I think we’ve changed how English football is perceived around the world, though there are still questions to answer until we win,’ said Southgate yesterday.

‘To have the consistency of finishes that we have is important for English football because I think everybody working in the game travels and gets comments about the English game.

‘We live in an angry country and I would love that to be different. Hopefully we can bring some temporary happiness.’

Tomorrow night Spain are the opponent. The only team to have progressed through the tournament by prevailing in every game, the three-time tournament winners have been installed as favourites and rightly so.

Luis de la Fuente’s side have the best holding midfield player in the world in Rodri of Manchester City. They also have two outstanding wide players in Athletic Bilbao’s Nico Williams and the 16-year-old wunderkind of Barcelona, Lamine Yamal.

Spain represent a serious step up in opponent for England. In a tournament of largely modest teams, Spain have stood tall. England, however, have the precious commodity of momentum that has arrived via two close squeaks against Slovakia and Switzerland and a performance against the Netherlands in a Dortmund semi-final that saw Southgate’s team play their best football of the summer.

England can beat Spain, for sure. This is not the Spanish team of Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets and Villa that swept all before them on a tide of creative genius and joy between 2008 and 2012.

This is a good team but it is not that team. It is a team without a world-class centre forward — Alvaro Morata is not that — and a slight aerial vulnerability across the back that was exploited by Germany and then France in narrow quarter-final and semi-final victories.

In order to prevail on Sunday, England will need a step up in performance from anything we have seen. But the freedom of overcoming their own psychological and physical demons should embolden them. Southgate has admitted his players were fearful early on. But there is nothing to be frightened of now. Defeat would be devastating in its own way but it would not be failure. There is a difference.

If victory is to come then England will require decisive contributions from players such as Declan Rice, John Stones and Jordan Pickford. The outcome will hinge as much on English pragmatism and security as much as it will flair. It will also depend on Southgate and his ability to make big calls at the right moment.

The 53-year-old has not had a great tournament. He has been found sitting on his hands too often when tactical tweaks or substitutions were required. Other coaches have shown him up in this regard. But against the Netherlands, his 80th-minute decision to send on Cole Palmer and Ollie Watkins won England the game. We may well need some of that in Berlin.

But England have an opportunity tomorrow evening and that’s a wonderful thing to say. Southgate may well decide to leave his post whether his team win or lose this one.

In some ways, England’s stifled football in the early stages of Euro 2024 point to the need for a fresh voice going forward. Southgate built this platform, though. He is the manager who opened the door to feeling good about playing for England again and his players have walked right through it.

To win this tournament and break a dam that has held fast since the World Cup win of 1966 would be so transformative for English football and indeed for national pride at a time when life is so hard for so many that it is hard to actually visualise.

But before the nerves get hold of you have a look through Southgate’s squad. Names like Jude Bellingham, Kobbie Mainoo, Phil Foden, Palmer and Bukayo Saka should leap out at you.

They are Southgate’s England. They are our England. Tonight we pray for victory but the wonderfully consoling thought is that, whatever happens, things should continue to get better from here.

2024-07-12T21:52:28Z dg43tfdfdgfd