England have been playing international football for 152 years but it may be wrong to throw it back that far. They could have ventured to World Cups before the Second World War but, in their arrogance and isolationism, chose not to; they first played in a tournament in 1950, 74 years ago.
Since then, there were four semi-finals: 1966, 1968 (in a fourteam tournament), 1990 and 1996, only two on home soil. Then came the Southgate years and there have been three more. They are coming at three-year intervals: 2018, 2021 (in the delayed Euro 2020) and now 2024.
Maybe England are living in the golden years, even if they don’t know it. They have ploughed the most prosaic path possible to the semi-finals of Euro 2024 but they are there. Gareth Southgate’s three semi-finals put him ahead of Alf Ramsey, with two, and Bobby Robson and Terry Venables, who reached one apiece.
The rest – including managers as decorated at club level as Fabio Capello, Sven-Goran Eriksson and Don Revie – are on zero. Two of Southgate’s semi-finals will be abroad, as many as England had experienced in their history when he was appointed in 2016; Ramsey and Robson had one each. They have never reached a final on foreign soil.
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