Euros Final Preview: The paths Spain and England have taken to Europe’s heart couldn’t feel more different
LIONS' ROAR: England manager Gareth Southgate celebrates. Pic: Bradley Collyer/PA Wire.
It had to be Berlin.
Europe’s great green and grey capital of division and unity and all of the trauma and awkwardness that came at every step.
A city of immovable contrasts but prevailing styles. The creatives, impossibly cool to the point of parody, and the suited, hurried technocrats who run it. A place that asks you to define it and then scoffs at every suggestion.
It couldn’t have been Munich or Dortmund, genuinely great footballing cities they may be. But no. Is this new Spanish generation really good enough to match its immortals?
How the hell has Gareth Southgate managed this? What if…England win? These are questions to be pondered and debated in Berlin, preferably in some post-industrial spot over in the old east where this city’s cynicism runs deepest.
Yet the answers to all will lie in the West on Sunday, Euro 2024’s final night, when Spain and England gather us over at the Olympiastadion.
A tournament which was supposed to provide an escape from the overwrought, hyper-capitalized world that is club football in 2024 has provided us with some escapism, sure.
There has been plenty of sit-right-there-and-accept-the-utter-dullness too. Yet somehow we’ve got a final pairing that, as the clock ticks down, feels more intriguing by the minute.
The paths which Spain and England have taken to Europe’s heart couldn’t feel more different. Not just over the past month but in all of the months and years on the road here.
The Spanish sticking stubbornly with their idea but changing the man who harnesses it. England sticking with the man who brought them new ideas only to himself become the stubborn one.
It’s not about how you start, it’s how you finish. That has reportedly been the mantra from the top at England’s tournament base in Erfurt, about 300km southwest of Berlin.
For Southgate the finish line is in sight, an eight-year journey at the helm reaching an end that at different points here felt like it could be a darkly funny but fractious and ugly end, then a sad end, a kinda meh end (which might have been most appropriate) but now a glorious one, whether it be failure or triumph.
Southgate has guided England to a second major final in the space of three years after they’d made it to just one in the previous 100, mostly by sticking like glue to his own slogan.
He hasn’t started any game here the right way. Even the first half against the Netherlands in the semi-final, England’s best period of play in a long time, only came about after another terrible opening ten minutes.
It took Kobbie Mainoo, another decision Southgate got wrong before right, to regain control. Then Bukayo Saka and Phil Foden gave us the vision of what this thing could be.
The manager’s double change, doubly late, swung it decisively back England’s way and all was well in the world again. Yet do we now bank on Southgate starting his finishing act the right way?
“These are not normal football matches,” he has said, correctly because even when England have been awful their travails have remained compelling. “These are national events, with huge pressure, with really young men in the middle of it.”
His relationship with England’s Fourth Estate over the past four weeks alone has been fascinating to take in at close quarters. The insipid group stage performances (on the back of an awful send-off defeat to Iceland) had knives sharpened to razors.
Yet since Jude Bellingham swivelled and cycled an injury-time equaliser in Gelsenkirchen the shift has been remarkable. Some good old Berlin division and unity again. The red tops are now all-in on destiny and even the more measured of the press pack have gone hard on the ‘what more do you want?’ defence.
In even a half-perfect world you’d surely want England not to have switched off entirely in the second half against the Dutch, when Ronald Koeman’s tweaks brought his ailing and overmatched side back into it.
You’d want England’s attack to have found a shot on target before the closing 10 minutes against the Swiss, when penalties kept them alive. You’d want Slovakia to not have got within three added minutes of an Iceland-all-over-again job. These seem like small asks when we know there is surely so much more in this collection of English players.
Walking away on Wednesday night from Dortmund towards fresh railway hell and Berlin, that was our initial and now still overriding thought on Sunday’s final: if England are as slack and off it for as prolonged a period as they have been in every game here, can Spain do what a weak group and soft side of the draw couldn’t, truly punish them?
“They have been the best team,” Southgate admitted. “But we are there and from what we have shown to this point, we have as good a chance as they do.”
One small thing to quibble about — the use of ‘we’. England have got here primarily through individual brilliance hauling a clunky collective back from the brink. Save the 30 irresistible minutes before halftime in Dortmund it hasn’t clicked. Spain on the other hand have spent a month as click-through artists.
This is a plan and an ideal years in the making which has endured dark moments since the glorious run of 2008-12 came to an end. If England are this tournament’s great survivors, Spain’s press-and-possess religion is impressively enduring in the longer-term, given its failures.
But here Luis de la Fuente’s side have blossomed and grown, looking more and more worthy successors to the golden Xavi-Iniesta iteration.
In Rodri they have the sport’s most consistent difference maker of the past five years. Around him both Fabian Ruiz and Dani Olmo are having quite brilliant tournaments. Nico Williams has electrified and then there’s Lamine Yamal.
If his 17th birthday on Saturday shapes to be a quieter affair, the day two could be the real party. His pace and wild confidence will cause problems on a side where England have been weakest. The question isn’t can Southgate risk handing Luke Shaw a first start since February 1? It’s can he risk not doing so?
Spain’s defence remains a question of its own but, crucially, it gets stronger for the tournament’s final night, Dani Carvajal returning at right back and Robin Le Normand also available after suspension.
Carvajal is the kind of huge-game veteran that Spanish football has had so many of in recent times. In the past 23 years Spanish sides have faced international opponents in 22 club or country finals without defeat.
You could try to define that as an omen, or a run to be broken, as luck or even fate. Berlin would probably scoff at them all. But Spain have made it here the hardest way, Italy, Croatia, Germany and France all handled, spirited upstarts in Albania and Georgia too. That counts for a lot. Their ability to perform as a clear, cohesive unit counts too.
For all the talk of Saka, Foden, Bellingham and even captain Kane giving England the advantage in individuals, is Rodri not the tournament’s best solo artist too?
The time to ponder these questions is thankfully winding down. Berlin and the rest of us are ready for answers.
If the two teams in Berlin on Sunday were among the favourites to get there, the man standing between them is a surprise package.
A French official had been expected but not Francois Letexier, who at 35 will become the youngest referee in Euros final history. The vastly experienced and highly rated Clément Turpin was the anticipated appointment. Instead it will be Letexier, who has often served as Turpin’s fourth official.
After their hounding of Felix Zwayer ahead of the semi-final worked a charm with the German whistling the Dutch off the park, English voices haven’t raised objection to Letexier — yet.
Spain may be happier to see him. He’s been involved in two previous UEFA club finals, both won by Spanish sides. Because this is surely going to be a factor, VAR will be fellow Frenchman Jérôme Brisard.
Let’s hope we’re not overly familiar with him by the time the trophy is lifted.
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