Gareth Southgate believes England have the individual star quality to drive their hopes of Euro 2024 glory.
The squad arrived in Germany on the back of the friendly defeat by Iceland at Wembley and plenty of concerns, particularly with regard to fitness – some of which endure. The players were confident that the match-winners would step up, which is precisely what happened with Jude Bellingham in the 1-0 win against Serbia on Sunday in the opening round of Group C ties. Bellingham scored the goal and dazzled in the first half before the second became more of a defensive effort.
“Not every player can star in every game,” Southgate said, as he turned his attentions towards the match against Denmark on Thursday.
“What’s important is that different people pop up with the moments like Jude did. When I go through the history of our big games, there’s always been a different match-winner, a different guy to take the headlines and that’s as it will be if we are going to win a tournament.”
If the performance against Serbia came to look leggy and disjointed, Southgate and the players took heart from the clean sheet. England kept five of them in seven ties at the previous European Championship, when they were the beaten finalists, and three in five matches at the 2022 World Cup, when they reached the quarter-finals.
“If you keep clean sheets in tournaments you have a very good chance of going on and winning it,” Kyle Walker said. “That’s in anything. In the Premier League season, the Champions League season … you have a good foundation at the back and then you’ve got a good chance because the attacking threat that we’ve got up front, we should go and score goals.
“We’ve got off to a good start. We defended well against a physical side but still there’s room for improvement. It’s a lot of anxiousness around the camp with the first game. There’s going to be pressure. Everyone feels it. I’m the oldest head in the camp and I still go out on to the pitch and feel a bit nervous. You want to get off to a good start, wanting to do the country proud. Hopefully now we’ve got that game out the way, we can go on to achieve something really good.”
Southgate has not hidden his worries about the fitness of some of his players who have only recently returned from injury. Kieran Trippier battled through the 90 minutes against Serbia; the first time he had played a full game since 27 February. He was gripped by cramp in the 80th minute. It was only the second time since 30 January that Marc Guéhi had played the 90 minutes. John Stones completed the 90 for the second time since 9 April while for Harry Kane it was a first full match since 4 May. Southgate withdrew Bukayo Saka, who finished the season with an injury, on 76 minutes.
“The team in the second half didn’t have the same control,” Southgate said. “I thought physically we had players that needed the game. We’ve had a lot of players that hadn’t played 90 minutes for a long time. We expended a lot of energy in that first half. I knew we would dip.
“We are dealing with the cards we have been handed and trying to find the best way with that. So I’m really pleased that given the circumstance, we’ve managed to show the resilience we did in the second half.”
Kane was peripheral in the first half, touching the ball only twice. He dug deep in the second period, fighting to give England an outlet as Serbia dialled up the pressure. “I thought second half, he did an incredible job holding the ball up, the number of fouls that he won, he got his body across well,” Southgate said.
“There isn’t space in that frontline for everybody to be on the ball in every moment. In the first half, Bukayo was prominent. Jude was prominent. Trent [Alexander-Arnold] and Phil [Foden] had moments. So Harry didn’t get as much of the ball but in the second half his performance was absolutely crucial to us getting the win.”
