England are football’s great underachievers – we can banish that forever today

‘There has been a willingness to accept second best’

The reality is our failure to win a major competition since 1966 is a sad reflection of our national team’s performance, in stark contrast to the regular success of our clubs on the European stage.

Books have been written trying to get to the root of why so many of our national sides have failed. Sometimes it was due to a lack of quality. But for as long as I can remember watching England since the 1980s, for some reason the national team have also been unable to match the victorious countries or our most successful clubs when it comes to a winning mentality.

Our top Premier League clubs have that will to win as part of their ethos. English clubs dominated Uefa competitions for periods of the 1970s and 80s with teams full of English players. Today, if Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal or Chelsea reach a final and lose, the feeling of devastation is such that an entire season can be written off as failure, albeit there is much more overseas influence now. The mindset is still different for the homegrown players in those teams. Even Champions League final defeats mean nothing because the clubs have such a storied history. Near-misses barely get a mention in the club museums. England, by contrast, have been reduced to celebrating gritty failures.

It means that as a country, there has been greater willingness to accept second, third or fourth best, and that can feed a culture where aspirations are lowered.

We’re ready to hand out OBE’s or talk about knighthoods for nearly winning. The strongest nations are interested only in taking a trophy on a bus tour, not consoling themselves with hard-luck stories of what might have been.

In the build-up to the Spain match, there are worrying signs that this undercurrent lingers. Not from the players, but from some elements of England’s support who are already content, no matter what the outcome. The “minimum requirement” was achieved with a semi-final place, with anything more seen as a bonus. This is the language of the plucky underdog. Spain will love it every time they hear an England fan express such a view.

Here is another example of a lack of winning mentality. The question was asked over the past few days if Gareth Southgate is England’s most successful coach because he has led the country to two finals, including the first on foreign soil. Sorry, but he is not. Southgate needs to match Sir Alf Ramsey and win a trophy to be worthy of that description. Beat Spain and this conversation can be started.

Southgate has done a good job 

Since the quarter-final win over the Swiss, other people have asked, “Where are Southgate’s critics now?”

My response to that is: “Where were any credible Southgate critics before?” A few loud voices on social media or a minority of supporters who consistently fail to recognise the peculiarities of international football – and vast differences with the club game – have been given too much prominence throughout his tenure and maybe increasingly so over the past month. Those people will not believe they were wrong unless Southgate wins a trophy.

I cannot think of one respected pundit or journalist covering England who does not believe Southgate has done a very good job, but there was certainly nothing unfair about the way England’s first four games of this competition were analysed and reported. They were not very good.

England’s display against the Dutch was a wonderful anomaly, not part of a trend. Everyone can see that and Southgate was rightly lauded for getting the big decisions 100 per cent right. That does not mean every move he made before that should be re-evaluated. Coaches, like their teams, can evolve over time.

Spain have goals all over the pitch

It is right that everyone should be excited ahead of Sunday because it looks like England may be saving the best until last – and some of the new generation of England players do have an edge to them that was previously missing. When you reach the final, it is not the moment to review what has been done to get there and start patting everyone on the back. Now is the time to seize the moment, fulfil your destiny and finish the job. That’s the winning mentality.

Many of England’s starting XI were in exactly the same position three years ago. When you have reached one final and then repeat it, victory is the logical next step.

That said, Spain are slight favourites to win Sunday’s final. They have more players with experience of winning major trophies.

Before the tournament started, there were four teams strongly tipped to win; England, France, Germany and Portugal. Spain were considered outsiders, supposedly lacking the world-class attackers needed for a balanced side. Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams have shifted the perception.

As the Euros progressed, Spain became the best team in it. They could become the first team to win every match at a Euros, with only the extra-time victory over Germany needing more than 90 minutes.

They have goals all over the pitch – nine different players have scored – and have the highest expected goals in the competition.

Spain also possesses an aura about them because of the mentality I have referenced. For them, winning is the be-all and end-all. Their recent record against the stronger nations is excellent.

Spain’s tournament, and the past few years, is littered with victories against high-class opposition – France, Germany and Portugal among them. Aside from Germany in the last Euros, how many major nations have England beaten recently? A fading Italy in the qualifiers and the Dutch in the quarter-finals? We knew we would need at least one big scalp to become European champions.

Beat Spain and everything changes. The manager and players will rightly be called legends, the New Year’s honours list will be correctly packed with the names of coaching staff and footballers, and England truly will have found its golden generation.

Most importantly of all, the class of 2024 will be given the best description of any elite team: Winners.