It was a defeat to Iceland that ended a dismal Euros campaign to essentially start the Gareth Southgate era and… well, you can fill in the rest. The manager must concentrate on filling in the many gaps in this surprisingly callow team before the Euro 2024 first game against Serbia on Sunday week, and maybe a bit more. A strange history was made with the 1-0 defeat to Iceland at Wembley on Friday, that doesn’t necessarily augur that well for the month ahead. England lost the last game before a full tournament for just the second time in their history, and the first since 1954.
That was a famous 7-1 defeat to Hungary, which illustrates just what a different era it was. The very fact that many victorious send-offs since produced some bad tournaments means that little enough should be read into such results, and it’s not like there will be wails of protest in the manner we’ve seen in the past.
