The national teams hoping to win Euro 2024 will have a crucial chance to try out new players and potentially fire some of the established players during the final international break before the end of the European club season.
France, the 2022 World Cup finalists, will need to maneuver a very strong team that finished second in the Euro 2020 tournament. While Germany will be itching to bounce back from the setbacks of the previous World Cup and European Championship, England will be hatching plans to do even better this time after finishing as the runner up at the Euro 2020 competition. So let’s discuss our favorites;
England
Has there ever been an England team that looked this good? Right now, Phil Foden, Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice, John Stones, Trent Alexander-Arnold, and Harry Kane are having the best individual seasons of any players in Europe.
Although history contradicts their hype, because they have never won this competition, they did come close in Euro 2020. The Three Lions are the favorites to win the trophy and have as strong a chance as anyone. In actuality, they are the most successful squad in the history of the European Championship to have never won the championship.
France
This is a very talented French team. Naturally, Kylian Mbappe heads this all-star group, but there are other notable players as well: Antoine Griezmann and Olivier Giroud are seasoned veterans, William Saliba, Eduardo Camavinga, and Aurelien Tchouameni are former wonderkids who are now world stars, and Mike Maignan is a solid replacement for goalkeeper Hugo Lloris.
Spain
It’s safe to assume that Spain’s roster is the most unified of all the major teams, despite their lack of an obvious goal scorer since the days of David Villa and Fernando Torres. With several of these players having grown up on the same pass-and-press 4-3-3 that paid off for La Roja’s Golden Generation, it feels more like a club than an international setup.
Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Luis de la Fuente, the new manager, has addressed the issues that have plagued the Spanish for the last ten years.
Portugal
After a much-maligned tenure with Belgium (with whom he didn’t exactly do horribly), Roberto Martinez took over as manager of the Portuguese squad and a roster clearly led by multiple superstars.
Granted, Portugal’s group isn’t the hardest, and their star player hasn’t actually participated in a meaningful match since the last World Cup—as enjoyable as it may seem for Cristiano Ronaldo in Saudi Arabia, there is still a lot of discussion on how to move on from CR7. We personally don’t see them going far in the competition.