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

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?

The official allocation of 10,295 England will be situated behind one of the goals at the Olympiastadion.

Since renovations in 2004, the Olympiastadion has a permanent capacity of 74,475 seats and is the largest stadium in Germany for international football matches.

Despite the reduced view from the running track detaching fans from the action the atmosphere is expected to be feverish for the final.

Other England fans will be dotted around the stadium at different locations.

The Spanish supporters have been allocated their tickets at the opposite end.

For many an England player, winning a major final against Spain and scoring in it would represent a perfect day this weekend. For a couple, it has already happened. Not in a senior European Championships either but a World Cup, albeit at Under-17 level.

Phil Foden got the third and fifth goals, sandwiching a strike by Marc Guehi in a 5-2 win in 2017. “Very good memories,” said the centre-back, studying the footage seven years on. “We were playing against a really good team in Spain.”

As England came from 2-0 down in Kolkata and Gareth Southgate’s team now have conceded first in each of the last 16, the quarter-final and the semi-final before eventually prevailing, the similarities may yet continue. “I remember coming down the tunnel and we had scored just before half-time [through Rhian Brewster] and their heads went down,” Guehi recalled. “I think it was just a moment for us to be vocal and to say, ‘we’ve got this. It’s not going to happen again.’ It just showed the resilience of the team at the time to overcome such a tough moment for us.”

Throughout the tournament, the BBC and ITV have alternated which matches each broadcaster has shown, but both will be showing the final.

Lineker revealed his presenting team on the Rest Is Football podcast, saying: “It’ll be a buzz on the BBC, we’ll all be there.

In Luis de la Fuente’s first international break with Spain back in March 2023, he stopped a training session at moments that the players didn’t expect. It’s an approach that has become familiar now, but was odd for the squad at the time.

One intervention was for goalkeeper Unai Simon to kick it long. Another was to work on set pieces, since De la Fuente’s predecessor Luis Enrique had insisted he “didn’t have time”. These are rudimentarily pragmatic elements that seem to run against Spain’s ideological purism, the pressing-possession that has dominated the game for 16 years, but that was part of the point.

By contrast, Enrique gave long instructional talks with a giant screen after sessions, which began to contribute to a sense of detachment and drift. This was the great frustration with his regime. It had seemed like a vibrant new era with a new generation, but ended up falling to all of the same old flaws Spain have suffered since 2012.

Uefa have confirmed how the Golden Boot will be awarded after the Euro 2024 final on Sunday, with Harry Kane still in the running to claim it for a second major international tournament.

Having scored six times at the 2018 World Cup to claim top scorer on that occasion, the Bayern Munich front man and Three Lions skipper has netted three so far in Germany this summer.

Scoring from the penalty spot against Netherlands in the semis – after also finding the target against Denmark and in extra time against Slovakia – put Kane level at the top with Dani Olmo of Spain, Cody Gakpo of Netherlands, Jamal Musiala of hosts Germany, Georgia’s Georges Mikautadze and Slovakia’s Ivan Schranz.