There is a pervasive idea in English football that the national team is its own worst enemy when it comes to the business end of major tournaments.
During the past 20 years, they have been knocked out of the European Championship by world-beaters and minnows alike, with the only constant seemingly that the Three Lions are somehow always at the root of their own downfall.
Be it through some combination of external pressures, tactical naivety, physical exhaustion or technical inferiority, the expectation that England should be equipped to challenge Europe’s best for the ultimate prize almost always yields a slim harvest.
Part of the renewed optimism that accompanied success for Gareth Southgate’s team at the 2018 World Cup in Russia was a sense that, through a shift in the way young English players are educated and a change in approach to tournament play, those obstacles are at last being overcome.
But what has prevented England from getting going when the going gets tough? i spoke to three players whose goals have dumped England out of past European Championships to see what, to the outside eye, has been at the heart of the team’s tribulations.
Ragnar Sigurdsson (Iceland, 2016)
The defender scored his side’s equaliser in their stunning 2-1 win against Roy Hodgson’s team five years ago, condemning England to one of their greatest humiliations.
“The first thing that comes to mind is the pressure placed by the rest of the country,” Sigurdsson says. “It’s really brutal how players get killed in the newspapers. In my experience it’s the worst in England and in Russia. I think maybe the players are a little bit afraid of that. It makes them nervous.
“There’s so much money and concentration on non-football things. When you play for big teams, perhaps there are too many distractions. I don’t think the England players are egoistic. I know some teams that are like that and that’s why their players don’t perform. That’s not English players.
“England clearly panicked [against Iceland] and we could see that. When you’re panicking, you start doing things you don’t normally do, then that confuses the next guy. Suddenly he doesn’t know what to do or where to go, so it becomes a chain reaction. That was what happened to them.
“Expectation can help you but it can also be destructive.”
Helder Postiga (Portugal, 2004)
The striker had just completed a single, uninspiring season at Tottenham when Portugal hosted Euro 2004 and, with England seven minutes away from knocking out the hosts in the quarter-final, Postiga cropped up to equalise Michael Owen’s early strike.
“It was an epic game between two golden generations,” he recalls. “I think in England, like Portugal, the people love football so much that they become too involved.
“The Premier League is such a tough, competitive league. I think players sometimes turn up for tournaments tired. In Portugal, we associate England with intensity and passion, with physical players, with strength and with fitness.
“But the culture is changing in England and the national team will benefit. There were just a couple of foreign coaches in the Premier League when I was there. The greater influence of foreign coaches has started to change the mentality of the players. It’s more about quality these days than physicality.
“It takes time to adapt to English football, but maybe in that same way, England’s footballers don’t adapt the way they play in tournaments.”
Ioan Ganea (Romania, 2000)
England went into their final group game at Euro 2000 knowing that a draw against Romania would see them qualify for the knockout stage but at 2-2 going into the final minute, a catastrophic challenge by Phil Neville gave away a crucial penalty which was converted by future Wolves striker Ganea.
“Maybe the pressure was the thing for England,” he says. “But remember, we were under pressure too. It was a difficult mission for us.
“I think if you fight and you are positive against England, like we were in Charleroi, they find that very difficult.
“It helps too if you can play a match with a lot of goals, an open game against England. We always looked forward to how open games were against England. They always gave you chances.
“It was a wonderful evening for us. It was something that has gone down in Romanian history. Maybe we were quite lucky with the way that it happened, in the last minute with the penalty.
“England going out was just the difference of a penalty scored or missed. Sometimes there is no more explanation than that fortune.”
More from i on Euro 2020
- England aren’t ‘rubbish’ and Southgate isn’t a ‘fraud’ – we just need a bit of patience
- What the Premier League could learn from Euro 2020’s controversy-free referees
- The football nomad who became a hero for his role in saving Eriksen’s life
- How Ronaldo’s Coca-Cola stunt could change the face of football sponsorship
- How to watch every Euro 2020 match on TV and online in the UK
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2TasVXO
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