Gareth Southgate has said that England’s players were gripped by fear at the start of Euro 2024, but have now banished their demons and are ready to make history by reaching a first overseas final at a major tournament.
The England manager outlined the mentality shift which has led his squad to move from doubters to believers and feels it has underpinned their journey into tonight’s semi-final with Holland in Dortmund.
Southgate is set to bring Marc Guéhi back into his starting line-up after a one-match ban in place of Ezri Konsa, while sticking with a three-man defence, having switched to that formation for the quarter-final victory over Switzerland.
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England have not won in 90 minutes since their opening group game against Serbia but have shown resilience to come from behind in their previous two matches, and Southgate feels his players are ready to embrace the opportunity stretching out in front of them.
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“Ours is a sport where you sometimes play as well as the opponent allows you and we know we didn’t start the tournament well,” he said. “For me that’s been a fascinating experience to see the team have been fearful in the opening part of it. Almost concerned about what could go wrong.
“Sometimes as a coach you take a step back and observe, and one of the strengths of us over the last seven or eight years has been less fear, less inhibition. At the beginning of the tournament the expectation weighed quite heavily and the external noise was louder than it has ever been.
“We couldn’t quite get ourselves in the right place and, in the end, what was impressive was the players ground out results and found a way to win.
“I felt that shifted in the knockout stage and definitely in the quarter-final where I thought we saw a better version of us with the ball. We were freer.
“We definitely spoke about it. When you can sense that feeling you need to confront it. It’s no use avoiding it and hoping it will go away.”
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Southgate pointed to the second group game, a disappointing 1-1 draw with Denmark, as a turning point.
“There’s a picture of the players looking distraught. They’ve got a point that essentially ensured us qualifying. Every other team was celebrating with their fans at that and we were on our knees,” he said. “So I had to correct how they were viewing things. But, of course, that feeling was being reinforced so vocally and actively outside and I think they were picking up on that too much.
“We are now into that moment where it’s what’s possible and what’s achievable rather than what might go wrong. That is different for a player, for an athlete. This is now a chance to make history. We have enjoyed doing that; a chance to get to a first final not held in England. We are trying to break new ground. The great thing is we’re not sitting here happy with a semi-final. We want to go further and our aim is to come here and win it and we are now two games away from doing that.”
Southgate admitted that his team feared “embarrassment” as they struggled earlier in the tournament. “I’ve talked to a lot of psychologists over the years — one of the things that human beings want to avoid is public embarrassment. We had a little bit of that mindset in the group stage,” he told ITV.
The Dutch team were forced to cancel their media briefing yesterday after being left stranded on a train platform in stifling temperatures in Wolfsburg. Ronald Koeman’s squad were waiting for their train to Dortmund when they discovered it had been cancelled due to a blockage on the line.
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It forced them to instead book a flight for the 200-mile journey and miss out on the opportunity for a gentle warm-up on the pitch at the Westfalenstadion.
Southgate made light of the disruption and said: “I am sure they will still get dinner.”
With changes to the England line-up set to be kept to a minimum once again, there is an onus on the captain Harry Kane to find his range. The striker has scored twice in the competition, but his displays have not been as free-flowing as he would have liked.
He is, however, confident that England can reach Sunday’s final in Berlin and said there was an “aura” about the team that the Dutch would ignore at their peril. “We’re leaning on a lot of experience, we’re leaning on being here before [tournament semi-finals in 2018 and 2021],” Kane said. “Even just the perception from other teams — when you’ve been in finals, semi-finals on a consistent basis that gives you a certain aura as a team that other nations look at and that’s down to our own work.
“We’ve built that up over past tournaments and now we’re in a situation where we deserve to be because it’s not easy getting through any round of the tournament and we’ve found a way to do it. It’s a chance for us to take another step on and show what we can do.”
