Round about the capital of Germany, you can hear a famous supporters’ anthem sporadically break out. It’s a song most familiar for the refrain: “It’s coming home,” it goes, “it’s coming home – football’s coming home!”.
It has a catchy tune and wistful lyrics, first composed 28 years ago, when England hosted the European Championship and a pair of TV comedians combined with musicians for Three Lions, tapping into the longing of those who follow the English national team to replace decades of frustration with a single triumph in a major trophy.
The prize is still elusive, but closer on Sunday in Berlin, where England’s so-called Lions meet Spain in the Euro 2024 final, than it has been at any time except three summers ago when England reached the final of the last Euros, losing to Italy on penalties.
That was at home, at Wembley in London. Victory on Sunday, in a foreign city, would give extra oomph to the idea of bringing “football home”.
The song, the chant, the claim of home-ownership over the world’s most popular sport sometimes irritates opposing players.
If England – or at least Britain – can lay some claim to inventing football under its current rules, and, in the shape of Premier League, England is certainly home to the most globally popular domestic league, there is a long list of European nations who can regard themselves as far truer homes for elite international success.
England v Netherlands player ratings
Spain would be among them: in this century alone, they have lifted two Euros titles, which is two more than England ever have.
But the past counts for only so much, except when history imposes a burden of expectation. The Three Lions song made a catchphrase of the line “30 years of hurt”, counting back the three decades between England’s 1966 World Cup triumph, at home and those 1996 Euros.
That longing for a major trophy now stretches to 58 years. “I want to win so much on Sunday it hurts,” says Gareth Southgate, the head coach who has taken England far nearer to a major title than anybody in his job over those 58 years – a World Cup semi-final in 2018, now the finals of successive Euros – but still found himself being jeered by fans after a second successive dull draw on the trot in the group phase of the current campaign.
England have been sluggish for long phases of the tournament, a poor sum of their many gifted parts. The criticism has often been venomous. What Southgate has worked diligently at is transferring the pressure away from his players.
Like all international coaches, the detailed tasks of bettering players is largely beyond his remit and mainly down to their club coaches, with whom they work for nine months a year. And here’s one intriguing aspect of this final. This England’s team, man for man, have in large part been improved, directly or indirectly, by exposure to Spanish football.
Southgate’s most dynamic midfielder, 21-year-old Jude Bellingham, has just won a league and Uefa Champions League double with Real Madrid and if his club form has not been consistently replicated for his country over the last four weeks, Bellingham kept England alive at the Euros with a 95th-minute, improvised overhead volley to take a losing cause against Slovakia in the last-16 meeting into extra time.
Spain 2 France 1 - in pictures
A similar, knife-edge suspense was broken, in the 90th minute of the semi-final against the Netherlands, substitute Ollie Watkins completing a comeback – England have gone 1-0 down in every knockout match – with a fine, angled match-winner. Watkins’ rise up the professional ladder is relatively unusual in that, in his early 20s, he was still playing in the third tier of English football, at Exeter City.
What’s more usual is that he has climbed to a peak under the guidance of a Spanish coach. In just under two seasons under the studious tutelage of Unai Emery at Aston Villa, Watkins has become twice as effective a Premier League goalscorer as he had been under Emery’s predecessors at the club.
Scan through Southgate’s preferred outfield players and it’s rare to find one whose game has not been shaped by Spain. Kieran Trippier, like Bellingham, won the only league title of his career there, at Atletico Madrid. Kyle Walker, John Stones and reigning Premier League Footballer of the Year Phil Foden bring a tactical flexibility and confidence to England that has been nurtured by Pep Guardiola’s coaching at Manchester City. Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka have advanced their development under Mikel Arteta at Arsenal.
Fair to report that Arteta and Guardiola have seen their players perform with far more panache in the jerseys of Arsenal and City than for England in Germany. England topped their group, but did so via a narrow win over Serbia, a draw – again having taken a lead – against Denmark and a goalless stalemate versus Slovenia.
“We weren’t playing at the level we wanted,” Southgate acknowledges. “That was the coaching challenge. How do we fix what we’re doing? In the end that’s the job. The job is to allow the players to perform at their best.”
Put brutally, England have done that in isolated moments, saved by Bellingham’s acrobatics, by Saka’s superb equaliser against Switzerland in the quarter-final; by immaculate conversions in the penalties against the Swiss and by Harry Kane from the spot to draw level against the Dutch; and by Watkins.
Put optimistically, at least for the tens of thousands of England supporters filling out the boulevards of Berlin, the best is yet to come. A team including Kane, shy of the form that made him the Bundesliga’s leading scorer with Bayern Munich last season, Bellingham, Foden, Rice and Saka must be overdue a truly commanding 90 minutes.
Spain, victorious in all six of their matches at the Euros, and winners against Croatia, Italy, Germany and France on the way to win final, have enjoyed a series of such performances. They carry much the stronger momentum, thriving on the kind of expansive width that England, especially on their left, have conspicuously lacked.
Lamine Yamal, the Euro 2024 revelation, turned 17 on Saturday. Nico Williams celebrated his 22nd birthday on Friday, and If ever two young men have had a coming-of-age tournament, this is it.
Spain’s tyro wingers, with a tournament goal each and four assists between them, have given La Roja a new dimension, says head coach Luis de la Fuente. “We needed to add something to our traditional strengths,” he said ahead of the final.
“We are recognised around the world for our controlled style, our passing combinations, but what was missing was being able to shift to a faster game, to counter-attack. We’ve made the team less predictable. The key is having the players for it.”
Spain will press high up the field, entrust the outstanding Rodri, of City, to impose midfield command and if, just ahead of Rodri, Dani Olmo continues to shine as he did against Germany and France, they will not miss Pedri, ruled out of the final with a knee injury.
Form says clearly that this European Championship trophy should be coming home to Spain, where, after all, it was housed for eight years between 2008 and 2016.
For England, almost 60 years unfulfilled, Southgate admits: “There’s still some questions to answer.”
