The English national team has never won the European Championships, aka the Euros. Germany has, of course. And Italy. And France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia (in 1976, before anyone points out that they’re not called that any more), Greece and Denmark. Here are some of the other countries that have never won it: Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Sweden. That’s the company England keeps. It is a dismal, inexplicable record. Every time, England travels with a squad containing the most coveted players in world football; every time, they come back empty-handed. This year England’s stellar midfield and attack - Kane, Foden, Saka, Rice, Bellingham - will almost certainly be let down by the less than stellar defence.
The last Euros took place in England in 2021 - a year later than advertised, because of the pandemic. Our national team reached the final, and lost to Italy on penalties, whereupon the three young black men who missed their kicks in the shootout, Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho, received a torrent of racial abuse on social media. And the match was played in a stadium that had endured a riot prior to kick-off, as hordes of young and not-so-young men without tickets overwhelmed the security guards and stormed the stadium. (There is a lurid-looking Netflix documentary about the evening, ‘The Final: Attack on Wembley’.)
It was a riot waiting to happen. Post-pandemic restrictions meant that the ground was two-thirds full (and I’d like to be shown the science behind that particular calculation); meanwhile the media repeatedly told us that this was the most important game since 1966, when England won the World Cup, their only international trophy to date. In other words: “It’s England’s biggest match for fifty-five years! There are empty seats! But you can’t sit in them!” It was a provocation that didn’t end well.