SCOTTISH and German pundits have given their take on who will win the Euro 2024 final.
Scotland bowed out in the group stages of the tournament after failing to win a single game while hosts Germany crashed out of the competition after losing against Spain in the quarter-final.
Scottish view – Bill Leckie
We Scots have tried to kick the whole Anyone But England shoulder-chipper, we really have.
But you lot don’t make it easy for us, you really don’t.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s loads to like about your team. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden and Bukayo Saka doesn’t get football, end of it.
So if that’s all it came down to, wishing Gareth Southgate and Co. all the very best for a massive occasion tonight, my guess is your next-door neighbours wouldn’t have an issue.
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OK, so maybe if you lost to a last-minute goal or had your hearts broken on penalties yet again, we’d order up a round of Schadenfreude: The beer that makes you feel great about other people’s misery.
What we wouldn’t be, though, is glued to the box, wasting negative energy on praying for you to get humped. At worst, we’d be ambivalent. Tapas and rioja for dinner, that level of commitment to the cause.
However, it’s not as simple as deciding whether or not we want your team to win.
It’s about whether we want your COUNTRY to win; most particularly, those within your country who lack the awareness to understand that England isn’t Britain.
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For instance, while I’ve been writing this, Channel 4 have announced a screening of the 1966 World Cup Final ‘to whet the nation’s appetite’.
They did the same before the final of the last Euros, as oblivious then as now to the fact that, as a UK-wide broadcaster, ‘the nation’ isn’t just England, but Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland too.
This is the bit a lot of people down south probably don’t get. You probably don’t realise just how far up the noses of the Scots, Welsh and NornIrish it gets when BBC weather forecasters say “in The North…and now in Scotland” when to us, The North means John o’Groats, not Salford.
So let’s just say far enough that it would take a crack team of surgeons with an exceptionally long set of forceps to get all that indignation out.
Most of all, though, our willingness to put Bannockburn to one side and try to be supportive is strained to breaking point by your commentators, their sidekicks and a battery of studio pundits whose performances make Amazon wonder why they’re over-run with searches for woad and claymores.
Believe me, it takes a lot for Scots to stop boasting about tarmac, the telephone, penicillin and all the other stuff we claim to have invented. But when Sam Matterface, Lee Dixon, Micah Richards and Karen Carney are on, we forget the lot and instead give thanks to whoever developed the remote’s Mute button.
What was on of the Beeb’s mic-men said the other night?
“Denzel Dumfries there…a reminder to Scottish viewers that they were once in this tournament…”
Then there was THAT penalty against the Dutch, a decision called ‘disgraceful’ by the Englishman’s Englishman who is Gary Neville; yet one which Ian Wright instantly felt the need to play to the gallery by defending, apparently because for both of them to admit their team got lucky would summon Beetlejuice.
In short, then, if you want to know why we Scots still stuggle to throw ourselves behind your cause, it’s stuff like this. It’s the lack of awareness. It’s the entitlement. It’s the jingoism.
Plus, if you don’t mind me saying, it’s the fact that we cannot for the life us understand why you’re in another final yet half your country’s STILL slagging Southgate off.
Good God, if it was us, we’d be…well, let’s leave it there, because how we’d be if we ever reached a final is a debate for another day.
Most probably the one after hell freezes over.
German view – Erik Peters
A LOT of Germans still can’t understand why England are in the Euros final.
They have played terrible football most of the time, while we were knocked out by Spain in the quarter-finals.
But I just see the whinging from fans in my country as embarrassing.
Of course, the English had more than their fair share of fortune as they went through extra- time, a penalty shoot-out and a 90th-minute goal to reach the final.
But I still reckon it was impressive.
To believe in yourself right to the end and to perform like that under pressure is the sign of a true champion.
After all those decades of pain without a title, I don’t begrudge the Three Lions anything.
I would be especially happy for Harry Kane finally win a title.
Losing the Euro final at home to Italy at Wembley three years ago was too tragic.
The whole country was devastated. But they managed to pull themselves out of the doldrums.
Now, in Germany of all places, they are playing in their first final on foreign soil – and manager Gareth Southgate, who missed the decisive penalty against Andy Kopke in the semi-final at Wembley 28 years ago – can be the hero.
When I met Southgate for an interview at St George’s Park ahead of the tournament, I found him to be completely relaxed and surprisingly at ease.
When I asked him if his pain would be forgotten if England won the title in Germany, he replied: “No, because for the boys I played with at the time and for the manager, who sadly passed away last year, this was their personal chance. It’s not just about me.“
It shows what makes him tick: his desire to unite a nation and give them back the belief that they can finally achieve something great.
Unfortunately, his rather controlled manner does little to inspire the fans. It’s crazy that he was pelted with cups by his own fans after the 0-0 draw with Slovenia in the third group game.
He countered not so much with words but with results. He has a clear plan, but it is one that the many ‘event’ fans, who would rather see ten goals a game, have failed to recognise.
It means avoiding mistakes, being compact and tactically disciplined to deny the opposition their strengths – and ultimately relying on individual class up front. It pays off.
After all, the big teams in club football do it too, as Real Madrid proved again this year by winning the Champions League. Jude Bellingham knows this too.
It’s not about the beauty prize, especially at major tournaments. Nobody cares any more about how Greece won Euro 2004 or Portugal won Euro 2016.
That would certainly be the case with England.
After all, the English know how to play beautifully, but they have failed enough times. Now they suddenly have German virtues.
We were European champions in England in 1996, despite some terrible football. Why can’t the English do the same with us?
When I was a kid, I cheered for the Golden Generation of Michael Owen, David Beckham, Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney. But they were destroyed by the high expectations.
Now England have winners like Bellingham and Phil Foden. Any child can see that nobody is at the top of their game. All the more credit to the team for working as a unit – that’s modern football.
Since I started covering England for the Bild before the tournament began, I’ve heard a lot of talk from the England camp about how well the team works together.
I got to see just how good the atmosphere is when I faced new defender Marc Guehi at the dartboard before a press conference.
“You look confident,” he shouted at me – before winning the game.
And after reaching the final, Southgate gave me a hug.
I’m already dreading hearing the Spanish battle song “Campeones, Campeones, ole, ole, ole” in my home stadium in Berlin.
After all, we Germans haven’t won against them for 36 years.
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Anyway, I prefer the lovely chant “Football’s Coming Home”.
It’s finally time for the motherland of football to make this happen.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
