Don’t be fooled by the title, I do not expect England to win Euro 2012 but with the likes of Greece and Denmark winning the Championships in previous years, England could pull off the very improbable. I don’t believe in writing off teams and managers before a competitive ball has been kicked and being constantly negative about England certainly won’t help the team.
So in this article I will be highlighting the small reasons why England could win Euro 2012, they may be small but as a nation we can hope. England’s expectations for this tournament are the lowest for any tournament in my lifetime. These expectations are one deserved because of the amount of superior teams in the competition but secondly they could also lift the pressure on the England players which could benefit their performances.
I use the comparison to Greece because when they won Euro 2004 they did not have the best players on paper but they were extremely solid defensively and took their chances when they came, usually from set pieces. Now with England’s new manager Roy Hodgson renowned for getting his teams defensively solid and hard to beat, England could adopt the same policy. But of course when the time does come to attack and score the goal England have players with more magic than Greece did i.e. Young, Gerrard, and Rooney. The friendly win against Norway probably proved that England are going to play with two solid banks of four and let teams come on to them then hit them on the counter.
People will say that this won’t work against the better teams like Spain, Germany and Holland who will have more possession and have a lot more gifted players. However in tournaments there is a big element of luck and maybe even fate. Chelsea showed us that when winning the Champions League. Of course Barcelona and Bayern Munich had more possession, chances and better players but if luck is kind to you and you take your own chances you can beat the better teams.
England have showed this mentality before in a friendly back in November of last year when they beat Spain 1-0 at Wembley. It may have only been a friendly and you can’t read too much into them but England showed the type of performance I was talking about. They were dominated in the possession stats and Spain had many more chances but a scrappy Frank Lampard goal was enough to win it.
England would have to repeat performances like that throughout the tournament if they were to get close to winning the Euro’s for the first time. England do face a tough group having to play a good France team, a dangerous Sweden and a Ukraine team with home advantage, but if they can get out of the group you never know what might happen.
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