When you cover a major tournament but are mainly based in one camp, maybe it is natural to become just a little bit biased. For the past five weeks, those of us whose Euro 2024 hub has been Blankenhain - a sleepy town (population 6,681) in the Weimarer Land district of Thuringia - have seen a lot of the English players and staff . We’ve watched them train, we’ve had the odd chat, we’ve played darts against them.
We’ve seen a lot of Gareth Southgate and while his preferred style of football might not be to some people’s taste, he is a lovely, polite, friendly guy. It is hard not to want this man to win. No, this sort of stuff should not colour our judgement but, as Southgate himself said the other day, we are only human.
But it only colours it ever so slightly and an objective analysis of this Euro 2024 final makes Spain’s position as favourites entirely justifiable. In fact, they should be hot rather than warm favourites. Their form from day one has been outstanding, their midfield is a beautiful operation and, of course, they have the precocious talent of Lamine Yamal.
And on the way to the final, they have taken care of Italy, Germany and France. If you wanted to look at that strictly through English glasses, you could say that such a tough run just might have taken it out of them, physically and mentally. But they have had an extra day to recover ahead of the final and looked pretty fresh against the French on Tuesday night.
And never mind their current vein of.
