English football is still in a good position even after Euro 2024 defeat – the challenge now is to keep it going
IT will take a while for me and every England fan to get over this.
To come so close to winning that trophy, only to be beaten in a second Euros final in a row, is a huge disappointment.
Especially when it really felt like this was our time.
It seemed that everything was coming together for us to end the long wait for a major title.
But Spain deserved it. They were the better team in the final and the best team of the tournament.
We will all — supporters, players, coaches, the FA — have to move on and go again.
Because English football is still in a good position.
Gareth Southgate has taken us to two finals, a semi-final and a quarter-final in four tournaments. We have never produced a run like that before.
The challenge now is to maintain this level of competitiveness and make England even better.
Southgate and his staff have done a fantastic job in changing the whole environment and narrative around the national team.
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Whether Gareth carries on or not, the wider culture he has put in place must be preserved.
This tournament was the biggest test of that culture the team had to go through.
They overcame the problems and went all the way, only to fall at the final hurdle.
But there is every reason to believe we can challenge at the World Cup in 2026 and beyond.
We’ve got a really good group of players, many of them young, who can go on playing and performing for England for years.
Jude Bellingham, Kobbie Mainoo, Bukayo Saka, Phil Foden and Cole Palmer — to name just five — have plenty more tournaments in them.
Half the squad weren’t at the last World Cup but now they have tournament experience.
On the flipside, there are players who have missed out on this Euros who will be desperate to get back into the set-up. The likes of Marcus Rashford, Jack Grealish and James Maddison will feel they have a point to prove.
Everyone wants to be in the England squad when they’re doing well. I was left out of squads.
The team might be successful in those couple of games when you’re not there, which makes it harder to get back in there.
When the demands you need to meet in order to get in the national team squad keep going up, it helps to drive standards.
This tournament will also be an inspiration for the next generations of players. Unfortunately there isn’t the trophy lift to take that to a completely different level.
But England have delivered moments in Germany that will be replayed forever.
The Bellingham overhead kick and Ollie Watkins’ semi-final winner will be recreated in playgrounds and cages up and down the country.
When I was a kid, the goal I used to try to copy was the David Beckham free-kick against Greece in 2001 — even though I’m left-footed!
You see a lot of kids in England wearing Ronaldo shirts, Messi shirts, Mbappe shirts, because football has never been more global. But I believe national team success does still bring something extra.
To see English players competing again in a major final will, I hope, bring a new level of inspiration and desire to players in my Arsenal Under-18s team and across the country.
Reaching another final should also be a boost for English coaches.
These players come from academies and from a system that has never had success at international level.
You are seeing players competing at the very highest level, in a European Championship final, who have been coached by English coaches for their whole career.
When you look at the teams challenging at the top of the Premier League, their heartbeat is English players.
At Manchester City, it’s John Stones, Kyle Walker, Foden. At Arsenal, Saka and Declan Rice.
Of course, the influence of foreign coaches in the Premier League is incredibly strong.
City boss Pep Guardiola has changed the way we see football and his philosophy has trickled down into the academies.
But it’s still English coaches who are taking that Pep philosophy and trying to replicate it, while also adding their own ideas.
So credit to the coaches, the academies, the clubs and the FA for creating the system that has produced this team.
What I would like to see now is England continuing to develop, to become a team that can consistently dominate opponents and can give a real identity to English football.
We now have players who are comfortable on the ball and technically very good.
The biggest disappointment of the tournament was that we didn’t see that as often as we would have liked. That leaves us with a ‘what if?’ feeling.
England must not lose that old-school mentality of finding a way to win even when you’re not playing well — that never-say-die spirit which got us through this Euros more than once.
But the next step is to allow other qualities to shine through, to give the players that our system is creating the platform to show everything they can do.
The job for me and for other coaches is to keep producing players that are comfortable on the ball and understand how to perform under pressure at a high level.
English football is in a good place but we need to keep going. Then we will finally get over the line.