Euro 24, Group C; The best of times, the worst of times
England arrive in Germany in a more mixed state of mind than they probably need to be.
Ever get the feeling that there’s a perfect storm a-brewing? A European Championship being held in Germany. An England team which only lost the last final of this competition following a penalty shootout. A plethora of attacking options so great that several extremely high-profile names have been left out of the squad. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, let me count the ways. England have won one of the four games they’ve played in 2024, while their two matches before that—against Malta and North Macedonia—weren’t especially good either. There’s little defence to speak of, at least not one that will last long against European football’s best attacking players. And then there was their final warm-up match, the less said about which the better.
There are glaringly obvious plusses, of course. Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden were the players of the year in Spain and England respectively. Harry Kane may not have won any silverware in his first season at Bayern Munich, but it can hardly be said that Kane didn’t pull his weight, scoring 36 goals in 32 games in the Bundesliga and 45 in 44 goals in all competitions. Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka didn’t win anything either, but they were in outstanding form throughout the Premier League season.
But England always come with baggage that has little to nothing to do with football in the first place. Or, at the very least, potential baggage. The atmosphere among supporters in Germany would be febrile at the best of times, and these are resolutely not the best of times. The government has dropped a general election into the middle of all this, but with the election not actually taking place until the day before the quarter-finals start, this may not even trouble England that much, if some of the prognoses for this tournament are to be believed.
To what extent will electioneering by the cynical bleed into all of this? Would it be that surprising if Nigel Farage flew into one of the cities in which they’re playing and attempted some of his somehow not yet completely hackneyed, “I’m just a man of the people and not a Nazi being funded by Christ knows who” act? Stick your money on plastic furniture being flung through the air by men in cargo shorts and trainer socks. It feels like a safer bet than the team, at the moment.
The man at the eye of this potential hurricane, Gareth Southgate, is surely coming to the end of his time as the England manager. It’s been eight years and he has achieved a huge amount. But somewhere along the line, between losing that Euro 20 penalty shootout to Italy and being knocked out of the last World Cup by France, a bond of trust has been broken and we’re now into that phase when some are doing frankly barmy things like #southgateouting barely a week before their first match.
These are the two faces of England. On the one hand, there remains this absolute arrogance that with a handful of world class players they’ll just turn up and win no matter who they’re playing. But on the other is this absolutely unquenchable fatalism, a belief that there’s no manager who could ever be good enough, no group of players talented enough to satiate the delicate palates of the watching public, and no outcome beyond winning the trophy that could ever be less than they deserve.
They start against Serbia a week today, and that’s probably a good thing because about the best that can be said for Serbia is that they enter this tournament with fairly low expectations. This is a team that hasn’t got through the group stages of a major tournament since Euro 2000 and hasn’t qualified for the finals of this tournament since then. Furthermore, their form has been patchy over the last couple of years. They’ve lost five times since the 2022 World Cup and qualified from an extremely comfortable looking group, though their 3-0 win away to Sweden in their final warm-up game did serve as a reminder of their potential.
Their main man remains Aleksandar Mitrovic, their vice-captain and leading scorer, though there may be questions to ask about his match sharpness after having spent the last year in Saudi Arabia. He scored 28 in 28 league games last season, though, so maybe he’s sharper than some believe. There’s plenty of other experience and ability, of course, including captain Dusan Tadic, who’s now 35 and surely coming close to the end of an international career that has brought 108 appearances, Dusan Vlahovic, who occupied Arsenal’s thoughts for ages but ended up at Juventus instead (interested observers may wish to note that he’s scored 33 league goals in three seasons in Turin), and Fulham’s Sasa Lukic. Serbian expectations may be low, but qualification from this group remains a possibility.
It’s now been a little over 40 years since an Allan Simonsen penalty knocked England out of the European Championships at Wembley in qualifying. The current team isn’t quite of the calibre of that one, but Denmark still pushed England into extra-time in the semi-finals of this competition, so will they be looking to focus on the Spirit of ‘83 rather than the Spirit of ‘21. Of course, Denmark’s last appearance in this competition was completely overshadowed by the cardiac arrest suffered by Christian Eriksen during their opening match against Finland. That Eriksen is still in their squad, now with 130 appearances under his belt, feels little short of miraculous.
The three years since then haven’t necessarily been straightforward for Denmark. Their performance at the 2022 World Cup was poor, with just one point from three games and a group elimination, and although they qualified for the final comfortably—four points clear of third place, despite losing their final group match to Northern Ireland—but their performances weren’t exactly stellar; their 2-1 win away to San Marino fell considerably short of what might be expected of a Danish team.
Narrow friendly wins against Sweden and Norway have been a bit more like it, but with key players such as Pierre-Emile Højbjerg and Christian Eriksen having spent much of the season just gone on the bench and important defenders Simon Kjær and Andreas Christensen injured, the squad has been unsettled—more than 30 players were used during qualifying—and there remains a sense that they aren’t quite the team that they were three years ago. For all this, though, Rasmus Højlund has been a hit since scoring a hat-trick on his debut for them againsts Finland last year. He ended qualifying with seven goals and is an obvious danger, particularly to defences which aren’t quite on top of their game.
The other team to qualify for these finals from Denmark’s group was Slovenia, who tied on points with them and have been in pretty good form over the last couple of years. Indeed, Denmark are the only team to have beaten them in 2023 or 2024, in their penultimate qualifying match in Copenhagen. Slovenia’s form has been understated but consistent. 2024 has brought wins against the USA and Portugal, amongst others, though their last friendly match against a Bulgaria team who finished bottom of their qualifying group and without a win might be considered something of a disappointment. A 1-1 draw didn’t look like the springboard towards something greater.
It’s difficult to look far beyond Jan Oblak as the star of this team. He’s made almost 450 appearances in goal for Atletico Madrid over the last ten years, winning La Liga and the Europa League, as well as getting to the final of the Champions League in 2016. Prior to this, his breakthrough season with his previous club Benfica won him a league title, despite breaking into the first team with just 14 games of the season left to play. At the other end of the experience scale is Benjamin Sesko, who’s already scored 11 in 29 games despite being just 21 years old. He had an inter-company move from RB Salzburg to Leipzig last summer and his first season in the Bundesliga went pretty well, with 18 goals in 42 games in all competitions, and there’s already been talk of a move to the Premier League. He’s a star in the making, and England would be foolish to overlook him when they play Slovenia in their final group match.
(For those who wonder about such things, despite both being former Yugoslav states, relations between Slovenia and Serbia are pretty good - Slovenia’s involvement in the wars that ended up tearing Yugoslavia apart was minimal, and they current support Serbia’s application to join the European Union.)