By Mitch Phillips
BERLIN (Reuters) – Gareth Southgate is 90 minutes away from completing his eight-year mission to “win the respect of the football world”, when a win over Spain in Sunday’s Euro 2024 final would finally earn England a slot on the big screen highlights reel.
Southgate gave his penultimate press conference of the tournament in the bowels of Berlin’s Olympiastadion just over 24 hours before his team will run out seeking to finally win another major trophy to go alongside the 1966 World Cup.
The “58 years of hurt” that have followed that Wembley success usually featured a routine of overblown expectation followed by massive disappointment, and Southgate felt that that boom and bust was a self-perpetuating cycle.
“We tried to change the mindset from the start, we’ve tried to be more honest about where we were as a football nation,” he said.
“I’ve travelled to World Cups, European Championships and watched highlights reels before the matches on the big screens and we weren’t in any of them – because they only show the finals. So we needed to change that.
“We had high expectations, but they didn’t match where we were performance-wise. Now, the high expectations are still there but we have consistent performances over certainly three of the last four tournaments.”
England have been a slow burn in this one, only really catching fire in the semi-final victory over the Netherlands when they finally delivered an attacking display worthy of their pre-tournament favourites’ tag.
“We’ve had to find a different way of playing as the tournament progressed,” Southgate said. “When we came in we had a lot of issues, particularly at the back, a lot of players who missed a lot of football towards the end of the season.
“We’ve been trying to find the right blend and balance for our attacking players because we’ve got super talent but a lot who like to operate in similar areas.
“We feel we’ve started to find that balance. We’ve looked dangerous, like we could score goals again, and I’m happy where the team were at going into this game.”
Southgate played, and missed the decisive penalty, when Germany beat England in the semi-finals en route to victory at Wembley at Euro 96 but said he did not consider it any sort of fate for England to have the chance to win the trophy on German soil.
“I am not a believer in fairy tales. I am a believer in dreams,” he said. “We’ve had big dreams, but then you have to make those things happen and fight.
“Of course, it would be a lovely story, but we need to deliver a performance. You have to be in the latter stages of tournaments to be able to learn how to win those big games, and we’re learning that. We’ve come through a lot of big nights now.
“Tomorrow, I don’t have any fear of what might happen, because I’ve been through everything. I want the players to feel that fearlessness because if we’re not afraid to lose, it gives us a better chance of winning.”
England’s turnaround under Southgate, following their shock defeat by Iceland at Euro 2016, has seen them reach back to back Euro finals and a semi-final and quarter-final at the World Cup.
It is a remarkable record of consistency that no other European team, or previous England manager, has been able to match, but Southgate knows as well as anyone that that “success” will count for little if they don’t get over the line on Sunday.
“A lot of records have been broken,” he said. “But we know we have to we have to do this one, we have to get this trophy to really feel the respect of the rest of the football world.”
(Reporting by Mitch Phillips; Editing by Toby Davis)
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