England v Spain LIVE: Euro 2024 final team news and latest updates from Berlin

Bobby Charlton, Harry Kane, Ollie Watkins. There is an incongruous presence on the rather short list of players who have scored a semi-final winner for the England football team. Charlton was England’s record goalscorer and Kane is now. Charlton was a knight of the realm and, if England win Euro 2024, Kane may become one in retirement, too. Then there is Watkins; formerly of Weston-super-Mare, a footballer who was playing in the Conference South at the age Kobbie Mainoo was starring in a European Championships semi-final; who, at the age Jude Bellingham is now, was plying his trade in League Two for Exeter.

Watkins may be a perfect product of Gareth Southgate’s England. There are echoes of Kieran Trippier scoring in a World Cup semi-final in 2018, something only Charlton and Gary Lineker had previously done for the country. Southgate’s England have reversed a national trend of underachievement. They have also given some unlikely lads a rare status. Watkins will go from Weston-super-Mare to West Berlin, to the Olympiastadion. Whatever happens – and there is no guarantee he will even get on the pitch – he will remain indelibly associated with Dortmund.

Gareth Southgate believes everything is in place for England to win Euro 2024 – but warned success won’t just fall into the players’ laps or simply happen as a culmination of the hard work put in so far.

The Three Lions boss spoke in glowing terms of the effort the squad have put in to reach this stage to face Spain, not just during this summer in Germany but over a number of years, as well as again reinforcing his belief that the togetherness of the group has led to a gradual improvement in performances as the tournament has gone on.

However, his last public words to the group ahead of Sunday’s final in Berlin emphasised that they’d have to once more earn victory in a tough environment, despite the possible storylines and symmetries around Southgate and England winning in Germany, almost three decades after this year’s host nations won on English soil at Euro ‘96 following Southgate’s own missed penalty.

Declan Rice says that England know “not to sit back” in order to win Sunday’s Euro 2024 final against Spain at Berlin’s Olympiastadion, having learned from the painful memory of Euro 2020.

The midfielder said the squad are “desperate” to “rewrite history”, as he admitted that seeing Italy lift the trophy will haunt him forever. That may also involve learning from history, as Rice said that experience has shown them “how we can win this final”.

The 25-year-old is one of 11 players in the current squad who lost that showpiece at Wembley, and he admitted he now feels that it was England who let the game get away from them. Rice now believes the greatly improved performance in the 2-1 victory over Netherlands can be crucial to beating a Spain team that England have “massive respect for”, but that just winning a semi-final should also be enjoyed.

Declan Rice has opened up about how the Three Lions have been inspired by the Lionesses.

England hope to match Sarina Wiegman’s side and become European champions.

Now that Gareth Southgate sits in the Blankenhain base talking about how England might win a European Championship final, he can make an admission. “There was a danger”, as he puts it, that this Euro 2024 campaign and his entire managerial tenure could have unravelled. There was certainly a risk of the “doom and gloom” engulfing the squad.

“But,” Southgate adds, “I was determined to confront it.” That went way beyond walking towards the beer cups being thrown after the 0-0 draw with Slovenia, although he still feels that was crucial “because we fought too hard to change the environment for the players”. More important was to actually work through what was going wrong – “a coaching challenge. That wasn’t necessarily on the training ground.” It involved showing the players what they were actually doing on video, and comparing it to their instructions. There was also just a photo.

“We’ve just drawn against Denmark, they’re on two points, we’re on four, they’re celebrating with their fans, we’re on our knees.”

Gareth Southgate is poised to keep faith with Kieran Trippier at left-back for England’s Euro 2024 final against Spain, according to reports.

In a largely expected move, the Three Lions boss looks set to pick the same line-up that started against Netherlands.

It means Luke Shaw is poised to start on the bench and will have to wait once more to impact the Berlin final.

Never more than when England are in a tournament, the mantra of ‘Scouse, not English’ is heard as justification for not getting behind the Three Lions in some quarters of Liverpool.

But it appears the Basque Autonomous Community have the same attitude to the Spanish national team.

One Atheltic Bilbao fan X account wrote: “If you don’t go with England this Sunday you don’t like football.”

The Ballon d’Or isn’t exactly an outright popularity contest, but there’s certainly more to who gets the award than a simple conversation of who has been the best player across the year.

Positionally, personality and prizes all seem to take huge standing in the overall podium rank, even now that the long-running era of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo dominance appears to have reached its conclusion, following the former’s move to MLS.

As such, it’s down to performance levels at the elite end, yes, but inevitably also playing for one of the superclubs, achieving something momentous at club level – often several somethings – and then, in years when the calendar allows so, adding success at international level.

England v Spain is a tough match to call on Sunday but there is one contest for which we already know the result. The BBC and ITV will both broadcast the Euro 2024 final live, and the BBC is set to enjoy a significantly larger share of the viewing figures.

Three years ago, a peak of 31 million people tuned into the Euro 2020 final, which England lost to Italy on penalties. It was the UK’s most-watched TV event since Princess Diana’s funeral and the BBC picked up 25 million (81 per cent) of the audience, compared to ITV’s 5.9 million.

That difference is the natural consequence of trying to push Gillette razors at every possible interval, which seems to include the miniscule gap between national anthems and kick-off these days. But might that ratio shift this time around? Could ITV eat into the BBC’s giant share of the pie?