ENGLAND have failed to set the world on fire in their first three games of EURO 2024. Despite qualifying as group winners, England have disappointed the hordes of fans currently swilling beer and sausage in Germany. The media built them up before the tournament, there was an air of expectation that assumed Gareth Southgate’s team were champions in waiting. Lack-lustre displays against Serbia, Denmark and Slovenia should have acted as a bucket of cold water, but with the knockout draw, comes fresh entitlement.
England now believe that the draw has “opened up” and to some extent, it has. It is not the first time this has happened – in 2018 and 2020 the knockout stage was generous. The same seems to be happening again. With good fortune, the tedium of the “group of slumber” will be forgotten.
But it has to be remembered that a tournament is, to use a modern term to describe anything that has a beginning, middle and end, a journey. Hence, a team primed for a campaign that may have peaks and troughs, can come through as an unlikely winner.
England have often taken time to find their rhythm in the World Cup and European Championship. The pattern is quite established – over expectation follows recovery, follows defeat at the hands of the first very good team they encounter. How many times in the past 50 years has a tournament started with crisis, confrontation and redemption?
In 1986, England began their World Cup with a defeat and a draw before resetting and reaching the last eight where the hand of Maradona sent them out in controversial circumstances. 1990 ended with heartbreak, but there was a point where the team and manager Bobby Robson were getting severe criticism by the media and Italia ’90 tourists. 2014 was a disaster and so too was EURO 2016.
The European Championship has disappointed more than it has delighted. The first eight-team format in 1980 was a massive let-down, with England failing to get out of a group that included Belgium, Italy and Spain. Eight years on, Robson’s highly-rated team lost all three games against Ireland, the Netherlands and USSR. Then there was 1992, with no wins from encounters with Denmark, France and Sweden.
Since the double debacle of 2014 and 2016, England have improved but clearly, in the current era, it is very hard not to qualify or even get out of a first stage group in a 24-team structure. The extensive qualifying programmes mean that teams like England can built up misleading track records against lower-level nations that leak goals. When they embark on the competition proper, the quality is more concentrated and invariably, any elite country proves to be a substantial hurdle. Hence, Croatia and Italy, both of whom could be considered beatable opponents, have surprised England at the end of the “journey”.
Patience is not something supporters can easily demonstrate. Those in Germany, for example, have paid out hard-earned cash to get there, have spent a lot of their time drinking and working themselves up into a frenzy and they want a return on their investment. Therefore, asking for them to believe in the process and adopt a “jam tomorrow” attitude just won’t work. The experience of the travelling fan is black and white, so pleading for thoughtful watching and waiting is unrealistic.
England are now in a better place, but they have no exclusivity of a draw “opening up”. Indeed, just as they will feel the route could have been worse, teams like Austria, Turkey, Slovakia, Switzerland and Italy will also be thinking that their half of the draw doesn’t look too bad at all. And even in the top half, some nations will be glad they are unlikely to meet England. Whoever Southgate’s charges meet, it will not be easy and it would be foolish to expect a comfortable ride towards Berlin, July 14.
GAME OF THE PEOPLE 
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