Euro 2024 final live: England v Spain build-up as Southgate ‘makes left-back call’

“I was petrified of him coming home and killing me.” For Emma Armstrong, a survivor of domestic abuse, football went from an enjoyable pastime and hobby to something that even 11 years on has left its scars.

Emma went from a season-ticket holder at a Premier League club to someone who actively avoids the game and tries to distance herself from it because of the association between football and what she experienced.

Football is unavoidable, especially when England are in a major tournament, and it has a lasting impact far beyond the reaches of whether Gareth Southgate’s 26-man squad succeed or fail.

Southgate, you’re the one. The one manager in England’s century and a half of playing international football to take them to two finals. The only one to reach a final on foreign soil. The one who, if Spain are beaten in Berlin on Sunday, will have a claim to dislodge Sir Alf Ramsey from the top of the list of England managers.

In Luis de la Fuente’s first international break with Spain back in March 2023, he stopped a training session at moments that the players didn’t expect. It’s an approach that has become familiar now, but was odd for the squad at the time.

One intervention was for goalkeeper Unai Simon to kick it long. Another was to work on set pieces, since De la Fuente’s predecessor Luis Enrique had insisted he “didn’t have time”. These are rudimentarily pragmatic elements that seem to run against Spain’s ideological purism, the pressing-possession that has dominated the game for 16 years, but that was part of the point.

By contrast, Enrique gave long instructional talks with a giant screen after sessions, which began to contribute to a sense of detachment and drift. This was the great frustration with his regime. It had seemed like a vibrant new era with a new generation, but ended up falling to all of the same old flaws Spain have suffered since 2012.

The 2022 World Cup elimination to Morocco was a nadir because of how excessive possession again became a parody with a punchline rather than a knockout blow. The 2008-12 glory era was becoming a burden, having previously been a long-awaited watershed.

The Ballon d’Or isn’t exactly an outright popularity contest, but there’s certainly more to who gets the award than a simple conversation of who has been the best player across the year.

Positionally, personality and prizes all seem to take huge standing in the overall podium rank, even now that the long-running era of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo dominance appears to have reached its conclusion, following the former’s move to MLS.

As such, it’s down to performance levels at the elite end, yes, but inevitably also playing for one of the superclubs, achieving something momentous at club level – often several somethings – and then, in years when the calendar allows so, adding success at international level.

Even so, there’s often also a storyline element which surrounds the front runners as the Ballon d’Or approaches, which this year will be in October, incorporating everything across 2023/24 as a result.

Heading into Euro 2024, for example, the narrative surrounded Toni Kroos. The midfielder had already announced his impending retirement, then won the Champions League final with his last club match. Could he repeat the trick on home soil and bow out with another trophy? He didn’t, of course. Spain saw to that, en route to the final themselves. It surely rules out Kroos as a retired victor of the game’s biggest individual prize, but two of his teammates are in the running: one obvious and often referred-to, the other overlooked and ignored in the wider Ballon d’Or conversation. Perhaps he shouldn’t be.

Gareth Southgate is poised to keep faith with Kieran Trippier at left-back for England’s Euro 2024 final against Spain, reports the Telegraph.

In a largely expected move, the Three Lions boss looks set to pick the same line-up that started against Netherlands.

It means Luke Shaw is poised to start on the bench and will have to wait once more to impact the Berlin final.

The smiles around the England camp emphasise that, in an atmosphere that is completely different to what it was like even two weeks ago. At that point, there was a risk of a bored disgruntlement taking hold, that could have made this campaign like 2010 or even 2000. It might instead be like 1966, with a chance for a grand redemption of Euro 2020.

While most of the players are just looking ahead to Sunday, some can’t help discussing that defeat to Italy at Wembley. Declan Rice has admitted it will “haunt” him “forever”. That’s only if this is another defeat, and Sunday sees England become the first ever team to lose consecutive European Championship finals, while Spain become the first to win this trophy four times.

Super subs. Late winners. Drama until the last. England’s journey through Euro 2024 has been about the collective, Gareth Southgate – and just about every post-match narrative since the last 16 – has been keen to reaffirm.

It can lead several conclusions to be drawn, depending on your perspective: a strong squad, perhaps? The wrong tactics or selections, for others. Either way, it is undeniable that England are finishing games better than they’ve started them, or finishing the tournament better than they started it.

But if the substitutions and in-game changes are of paramount importance to one team, so must they be to another: Spain themselves have a deep squad, one which Luis de la Fuente rotated to its fullest extent in their final group-stage game, one they’ve relied upon in the knockouts too as suspensions and injuries hit, particularly in the semi-final.

Of course, there’s every possibility – it’s a game of football, after all – that there are two or three early goals and the game is done, subs almost irrelevant, one team en route to glory and with a defensive second half. But the chances of that occurring seem low, with a final often tight, tense and full of moments rather than magic.

So who has the advantage if it goes the distance and the subs have a part to play?

More than 35,000 Three Lions fans are expected at Berlin’s Olympiastadion for Sunday’s Euro 2024 final against Spain.

The Football Supporters’ Association said the allocation for the 71,000-seater stadium confirmed “the old story” of tickets being kept from supporters and going to Uefa dignitaries and corporate sponsors.

“It’s tickets going to the wrong people in the first place,” they told the Guardian. “There will still be 30,000 England fans in the stadium but many will have ended up paying way over the odds on the black market.”

On Saturday night, England supporters gathered outside Murphy’s Irish Pub on Friedrichstrasse and sang as German police watched on.

Riot police stood to the side as fans congregated, some waving their T-shirts round their heads and standing on tables.

The 35-year-old French official, a FIFA-listed referee since 2017, has been the man in the middle in three matches so far at Euro 2024: Spain’s last-16 win over Georgia, and the group-stage clashes between Denmark-Serbia and Croatia-Albania.

Letexier, who also works on a part-time basis as a court bailiff, will be joined for Sunday’s final by two French assistants while Polish referee Szymon Marciniak, praised for his performance in the 2022 World Cup final, will be the fourth official.