It all started horribly in Munich. But if Scotland’s fans thought they were hitting rock bottom on opening night at Euro 2024, then they had better start bracing themselves for something even more nightmarish.
Tomorrow night in Dortmund England’s march towards the holy grail will continue when Gareth Southgate’s side takes on the Netherlands for a place in this summer’s final. Well, perhaps ‘march’ is stretching it a bit. Truth is they’ve been staggering and stumbling around all over Germany and yet here they are now, still standing, in spite of their own shoddy efforts.
It’s starting to induce cold sweats and flashbacks to Portugal 20 years ago, when Greece managed to bore their way to the title by sending the rest of Europe to sleep on their way to glory in Lisbon. Yet it can be argued that Southgate and his sleep-inducing squad are causing even more of an affront to the game, given the abject manner in which they have been going about their business over the last four weeks.
Yes, the Greeks may have stunk the place out in 2004 but they were punching so far above their weight that it was still possible to marvel at the sheer bloody-mindedness and tactical stuffiness of it all. That side was welded into a team which proved capable of rebuffing all comers. They beat Portugal – including prime Cristiano Ronaldo – in the opening match, before drawing with Spain and sending Raul and Co back across the border in the group stages.
They took down Zinedine Zidane’s French side in the quarter-finals and in doing so became the first nation in history to defeat both the hosts and the defending champions in the same tournament. And they brought a rampaging Czech Republic’s four-game tournament winning streak to a shuddering halt in the semis by grinding out another 1-0 win.
It was the same scoreline in the Final when Ronaldo was deprived of his crowning, second-coming-of-Christ moment on home soil. The Dutch, meanwhile, were sent packing in the semi-finals which is just another reason to suspect that history might be in the process of repeating.
Because if Southgate can somehow scramble past the Dutch tomorrow night this whole busted bandwagon will trundle on towards Berlin, where only France or Spain will be able to take its buckled wheels clean off before it reaches the finishing line. Perhaps it would be possible to be more admiring of England ’s efforts if only Southgate was swimming in the same kind of shallow talent pool that Greece boss Otto Rehhagel took with him to Portugal two decades ago.
But that is blatantly not the case. On the contrary, Southgate is drowning in star quality and his team has advanced this far despite his inability to weld them into a properly functioning team – or even just a side that wouldn’t get football stopped.
Because, regardless of what Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard and Micah Richards might try to convince you from their seats in the BBC studio at the Brandenburg Gate, England’s level of performance remains pitifully low. It actually beggared belief the other night when the three of them began love-bombing Southgate at half-time in the win over Switzerland which sealed a place in the final four.
“This is the England we’ve been waiting for,” was the suspiciously coordinated message, even though they had just watched their team fail to register a single first-half shot on target. They took it in turns to gush about Southgate’s tactical tweaks even though the manager’s reshuffled panic resulted in nothing much more than same s***, different toilet.
Bukayo Saka aside, England’s forward play and passing was every bit as ponderous and laboured as it has been since the tournament began. And the longer it went on the duller and more difficult to watch it became. So much so that Alan Shearer had to be reprimanded on co-comms for coming across as “indignant” after savaging Jordan Pickford for shelling an umpteenth aimless long ball in the general direction of Harry Kane.
Let’s not forget, even Scotland needed only 13 minutes to breach the Swiss defence in the group stages so it’s no wonder Shearer’s patience was being exhausted. That his colleagues back in Berlin then tried to claim that black was white was an insult to the intelligence and smacked of a three-line whip being passed down from the bosses above, who may or may not have been spooked by the petted-lipped whimpering from inside Southgate’s camp.
The manager believes he has been unfairly treated – and he’s been publicly backed by poster boy Jude Bellingham – but the unspoken subtext to all of it is simple and perhaps even a little bit sinister. It goes something along the lines of, if you’re English and you don’t feel like fawning over Southgate and the performances of his players, then your patriotism ought to be called into question.
That’s a dangerous and disingenuous rabbit hole to disappear down but Southgate appears to have willingly thrown himself into it head first, even though he must know his decision-making has been all over the place. It could even be argued that England might have had two European titles and maybe even a World Cup in the bag by now if a genuine, top-class manager had been in charge.
And yet they are still there, still in with a shot at bringing it home. That’s almost entirely down to the quality of the individuals Southgate is still able to send out on to the pitch. And it’s why there was little doubt of the outcome when that quarter-final against Switzerland went down to the wire of a penalty shootout.
The technical ability of the five players who stepped forward rendered the result almost inevitable from the moment Pickford saved Manual Akanji’s effort low at his left-hand post. It was the same story in the last 16 when Bellingham’s hitch-kick stopped Slovenia from knocking England out with seconds to spare.
There was only going to be one winner after the Real Madrid man’s dramatic intervention. And it feels for all the world as if something similar could be on the cards tomorrow against a Dutch side that has also been in fairly underwhelming form since the tournament began, albeit not to the same extent.
For as long as Southgate manages to stay afloat, England will remain heavily armed and highly dangerous. So if you thought this competition got off to a bad start back on June 14, then the coup de grace could be the real kick in Scotland’s balls.