Now we take Berlin. One way of looking back over England’s progress at Euro 2024 is to see it as geographically performative, a struggle to move beyond the green-fringed industrial centres of Germany, Gelsenkirchen, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Dortmund, places where even the football grounds resemble giant clanky tubular factory parts.
Grudgingly, awkwardly, and, for 20 minutes against the Netherlands, fluently, these Rhine-Ruhr staging points have been ticked off. England’s rustbelt football has prevailed. And now they have the reward, a trip to Mitteleuropa’s vivid, artsy, mega-city capital, and the prospect of a meeting with Spain, the team of the tournament, at the Olympiastadion on Sunday night.
A second major final in three years represents unprecedented riches for an England men’s team. Whatever the result against more fluent and convincing opponents in Berlin, this is already a distinct achievement for Southgate-era England.
Albeit one that arrives , in the classic internet-age style, trailed by a toxic cloud of criticism and unhappiness; portrayed by Southgate-truthers, the anti-woke and anyone who has taken a position that doesn’t correlate with the facts, as some kind of aesthetic abomination, at best a sustained eight-year fluke.
The noise is also useful however. Because it does reflect something real about England football; about the way England have got from there to here; and perhaps also the reason the current team have continued to look awkward and mannered, even as they have learned how to win.
In this respect Spain are the perfect opponents for late-Southgate England. Not in terms of the match-up, which looks ominous, not least on the flanks, where Spain are equipped to gouge open some obvious England weaknesses. But Spain also explain England. In terms of culture, influence, tactics and coaching hierarchies this is many ways an all-Spanish final. Real Spain? Meet Tribute Spain.
What we have here are two teams hugely influenced by the success of the Spain-Barcelona-Dutch dynamic over the last quarter-century. How Spanish is this final? Twenty-three players across the two squads have a Spanish club coach, or 27 if we allow Xavi to remain in the count.
Nine of those players are English, five of them in England’s starting XI. Pep Guardiola is Southgate’s coaching hero, a powerful influence on the controlled-possession football template of his England teams. Beyond that the entire Premier League can feel like a Pep tribute stage, from the coaches who gush over his influence, to the flood of high-grade Manchester City academy players flooding the England age groups, to the way football is now played even at grassroots level, led by dads and amateur coaches with access to a TV remote.
The Premier League may be economically expansionist. But Spanish football has won the culture war. Xabi Alonso is bossing the Bundesliga. Harry Kane’s new manager is basically a guy Pep says is good. And while Jude Bellingham versus Lamine Yamal may not make it far enough to become La Liga’s next Messi-Ronaldo marketing tool, both of these absolute eyeball-magnets are there right now. It is basically coming home whatever happens on Sunday night. Because the home of elite football, right now, is Spain.
The difference between these two finalists on these terms is clear enough. Spain actually are Spain, playing Spanish football moderated to their own strengths, wingers and a centre-forward. This is a team entirely at home playing the game it grew up with, possession, close technique, pass and move.
Whereas England have spent the last seven years enacting what is in effect a game but slightly dated impersonation of the dominant culture; and meeting now the mature emergence of a generation of academy graduates of the same football style, for whom this is all pretty much part of the same cycle.
But it is still, for Southgate at least, a learned style, and key to the way England have played over his mannered but successful four-tournament era. Why don’t England unleash, unshackle, throw it all up in the air? Why don’t they seem to express something innate and carefree? First, because this isn’t the way teams win. And second because their success has been built on a system that is basically learned by rote, and based above all on careful possession.
It is a considerable, bloody-minded achievement. There has been some surprise Southgate should take criticism of his tactical acuity personally, but perhaps this is because making the current success a reality has been such an all-consuming part of his professional life.
When, for example, Gary Lineker suggests Southgate has little understanding of tactics, Southgate might, if he were minded, point to the 10th anniversary of the England DNA project, a tactical system in which he was engaged from the start as England Under-21s manager.
Ahead of Berlin on Sunday it is worth glancing back now at December 2014 and the launch of that rough draft of the FA’s plans. Southgate was there at St George’s Park, fresh-faced and still a little gawky, and seemingly the third guy in the room after Dan Ashworth and Matt Crocker, now the technical director of the US Football Federation.
The mission statement, which seemed slightly fanciful at the time, was to “regularly challenge for victory at major tournaments”. The aims were widely drawn. “Playing style and philosophy.” “Understand what it means to be an England player.” At one point the FA release boasts that the DNA project has been “over a year in the making”. Oh yeah? A whole year?
And yes, the ideas are clunky and buzzword-laden. A lot of growth mindset chat pops up. The slides say things like “ENGLAND TEAMS AIM TO INTELLIGENTLY DOMINATE POSSESSION SELECTING THE RIGHT MOMENTS TO PROGRESS THE PLAY AND PENETRATE THE OPPOSITION”.
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Which sounds good. But how? Do you have any actual, specific advice on how to… INTELLIGENTLY REGAIN POSSESSION AS EARLY AND AS EFFICIENTLY AS POSSIBLE. TAKING INTO CONSIDERATION THE STATE OF THE GAME, THE ENVIRONMENT AND PRE-DETERMINED GAME PLAN.
Again, that’s great but how do we do this if oh hang on here we go ENGLAND TEAMS SENSE CHANGING MOMENTS IN THE GAME BOTH IN AND OUT OF POSSESSION REACTING INSTINCTIVELY AND INTELLIGENTLY.
At times this Southgate origins document is almost a pastiche, a series of outcomes without the actual steps to get there. Just play like Spain: this might have been easier and shorter. And Spain were very obviously the model at the end of the Xavi-Iniesta era.
For all that the England DNA project was on to something. Sometimes any kind of plan is a plan. This from Ashworth is undoubtedly true: “If everyone buys into and believes what you are trying to do it can become so much more powerful.”
Sport is often deceptively simple. Ten years on, Southgate is the constant here. England DNA did read the way club football was going, and got lucky with Guardiola’s arrival and influence. If you feed this into the system, then just keep ploughing that field, what we have now is what comes out at the other end. Not to mention the other thing Southgate and Ashworth talked about, which is England players moving up through the age groups, the process that means Phil Foden, Cole Palmer and Marc Guéhi have all been down a similar road before.
Whatever his flaws, Southgate is living what he set out to do. England, the greatest underachievers in international football are belatedly reaching their mean level. Hence, perhaps, when a Lineker-style figure tells him he doesn’t understand tactics, we get the slight sense of a man who wants to shout into his sleeve. Perhaps Southgate does lack a kind of mercurial in-game hunch-power. But here’s what he has been doing for the last 10 years. And it’s as good as England have ever got.
There is a thread here to the way England have won in Germany. Tactical mimesis, Spain but not Spain: it is perhaps unsurprising they can look stiff and awkward at times. Half an hour into the Switzerland game there was a sequence where England forced a corner after much lateral passing, then played the ball back, and back, and finally, from a corner, all the way back to Jordan Pickford, a move of such studied caution it was met with open laughter from the Swiss supporters.
The early stumbles were a consequence of Southgate trying to alter the flow of his team, to inject more fluidity and attacking weapons. The shift back into a more secure and stable back three, more controlled possession, has brought some improvements. By this stage Southgate looks like a man who set off by hiring a jetski, then realised he couldn’t actually ride a jetski, but has now managed to stop the jetski whirling him around in circles and is paddling it along with a plastic oar and actually doing fine for now.
The contrast with Spain is obvious enough. Luis de la Fuente’s team have found an excellent balance. Not just top goalscorers but with a huge variety of scorers and assisters. They look like a group of players successfully expressing something. Even the goalless second half against France was a finely executed act of control. Based on performances they will be strong favourites to win in Berlin.
On the other hand England have some excellent players, depth in attacking positions and a certain winning stubbornness. Much will depend on how possible it really is for a going-on-17-year-old to reproduce elite match-winning performances within the space of a few days. Dani Olmo looks capable of spreading panic between the lines. Rodri and Fabián Ruiz is a huge step up for England’s cut-and-paste midfield.
However the final plays out it is fitting Spain should be style-setting opponents. England are surely about to enter another phase now, with or without Southgate, a moment to review and regear the system of the last 10 years. A plan has been enacted here, a journey seen through from start to finish. But win or lose, Berlin feels like a terminus.