Once again England made qualifying for a major tournament look easy.
Gareth Southgate’s side came from a goal down to beat Italy 3-1 on Tuesday and secure their place at Euro 2024 in Germany with two games to spare.
They are unbeaten so far in the qualifiers and have only lost one such game in 24 years – when they were beaten 2-1 by the Czech Republic in 2019.
On paper, it was not an easy group for England. They were drawn with the defending European champions Italy as well as Ukraine, North Macedonia, and Malta, But in the end, they made it look easy with five wins, one draw, and no losses.
More to come from England – Gareth Southgate
Despite that, Southgate believes his side are still capable of much more.
“We need to make sure we are one of the top seeds next month,” he said. “The team needs to win the next two games. We want to be in control of that.
“There is more to come from this team. We need to keep building. This was the toughest qualifying group, with the seedings.
“People have criticized us for not beating the top teams enough. But we have performed really well.”
Italy, of course, beat England at Wembley to win Euro 2020 but the Three Lions have gone some way to avenging that loss with wins home and away against them in this qualifying campaign.
They fell behind to a goal by former West Ham United striker Gianluca Scamacca after 15 minutes. However, Harry Kane equalized from the penalty spot before half-time.
England’s brilliant second-half comeback
England then produced a superb second-half display with further goals from Marcus Rashford and Kane sealing the win.
“I feel like sometimes we make qualifying look easy, so credit to the boys because it’s not,” Kane told Channel 4.
“We’ve had one of the toughest groups, you’ve seen over recent years some big nations not going to major tournaments, so to do it [qualify] with two games to spare just shows the path we are on.”
Key to England’s revival against Italy was once again Jude Bellingham.
The Real Madrid forward is now a key player for club and country. This was therefore yet another superb display by the 20-year-old.
He won the penalty for Kane’s equalizer before setting up Rashford with a wonderful display of determination and skill.
His teammates were once again full of praise for his contribution, with Kalvin Phillips expressing disbelief at how he seems to “get better and better”, while Rashford described him as an “unbelievable” player.
