EUROCASH #4: An England golden generation at a major tournament in Germany. What could go wrong?
Despite defeat by Iceland in their final warm-up game, the value of a talented young England squad is reflected by our model - which forecasts a dogfight for second place in Group C
The last time a crop of England players known as a ‘golden generation’ (GG) played in a major tournament hosted by Germany was at the 2006 World Cup. The term had been coined a few years earlier by Adam Crozier, then the CEO of the Football Association.
Maybe it was Crozier’s background in advertising that led him to think that branding that posse of England stars in such a way might be helpful; he arrived at the FA having spent four years as CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi.
After leaving the FA, Crozier became CEO of the Royal Mail Group, and was ultimately in charge as the British Post Office scandal unfolded. After that he became CEO of ITV and then BT. But back to the football.
That GG at the 2006 World Cup had Paul Robinson in goal and a high-class back four of Gary Neville, Rio Ferdinand, John Terry and Ashley Cole. A fashion icon called David was bending it like Beckham from the right wing. Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard were at the heart of midfield. Joe Cole was still just 24 and apparently with a glorious future ahead of him. Bayern’s Owen Hargreaves, 25, and Tottenham’s Michael Carrick, 24, were also there.
Strikers included a 20-year-old Wayne Rooney, and 26-year-old Michael Owen, with other options in Liverpool’s Peter Crouch and Arsenal’s 17-year-old Theo Walcott, who didn’t actually get to play so much as a minute.
England won their group, then beat Ecuador to reached the quarter-finals before losing on penalties to Portugal. Again. England’s GG had also lost to Portugal, on penalties, in the quarter-finals at Euro 2004.
So while England are slight favourites with the bookmakers to win Euro 2024 (if not world rankings favourites, which is France), there should always be caution.
When I was speaking last week to Thomas Hitzlsperger to gather his thoughts as pundit for this series, he was running through the main contenders for the Euro 2024 title. And when he came to England, he said: “You never know what you’re going to get.”
It’s almost like he’s English. And we were talking three days before England went and lost their final warm-up match, at home, to Iceland.
Putting all that aside, England clearly do have a crop of brilliant players now, from Jude Bellingham, 20, who has already won La Liga and the Champions League with Real Madrid this season, to Phil Foden, who has won six Premier League titles (and he’s 23!) with Manchester City, including one as part of a Treble in 2022-23.
Harry Kane meanwhile was the Bundesliga’s highest scorer by a mile in 2023-24. Bukayo Saka, 22, and Declan Rice, 25, were both intrinsic to an Arsenal team who took the 2023-24 Premier League title race to the final day.
Cole Palmer, 22, had a stunning season with Chelsea. Ollie Watkins’ goals fired Aston Villa into next season’s Champions League. And Kobbie Mainoo, 19, heads to Germany on the back of a breakout domestic season which included scoring the winner in the FA Cup final against Manchester City.
Whether Gareth Southgate can marshal this group into Euros winners remains to be seen, but there is no doubt they will enter the tournament with expectations high. The bookies and the world rankings suggest that they should at least win Group C, and it is also what Sporting Intelligence’s financial model - based on the insurable values of the players involved in Euro 2024 - suggests will happen.
Between now and next Friday, I'm going to try to predict how the event will unfold, group by group, using that model. It's a refined - and hopefully improved - version of a model that has worked before, at two World Cups (in 2014 and 2018), and not been far off in a third.
I went into the rationale and methodology that underpins the model, last Friday, in this piece. It’s free for anyone wanting to read it and will save me repeating all the detail every day in this series.
Before we get into the financial minutiae of the players’ insurable values, here’s a basic recap of the four nations contesting Group C.
Slovenia 🇸🇮
Coach: Matjaž Kek, Slovenian, 62
Star man (in £ terms): Benjamin Šeško
Other star men: Most capped: Jasmin Kurtić (91). Most goals: Josip Iličić (17). Young guns (best players under 23): Šeško, Žan Vipotnik.
Previous Euros best: Group stage: 2000, when they finished last with two draws and a defeat.
Squad notes: The squad has members playing club football in Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the USA. Their average age is 27.75, with five players older than 30, and striker Josip Iličić the oldest at 36.
Denmark 🇩🇰
Coach: Kasper Hjulmand, Danish, 52.
Star man (in £ terms): Rasmus Højlund.
Other star men: Most capped: Simon Kjær (131). Most goals: Christian Eriksen (41). Young guns (best players under 23): Højlund, Victor Kristiansen.
Previous Euros best: Winners: 1992. Semi-finals:1984, 2021 (Euro 2020).
Squad notes: The squad has members playing club football in Belgium, England (11 of them, 10 in the Premier League), Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Their average age is slightly above 27.9, with seven players aged over 30, and Kasper Schmeichel the eldest at 37.
Serbia 🇷🇸
Coach: Dragan Stojković, Serbian, 59.
Star man (in £ terms): Dušan Vlahović.
Other star men: Most capped: Dušan Tadić (108). Most goals: Aleksandar Mitrović (58). Young guns (best players 23 and under): Strahinja Pavlović, Lazar Samardžić.
Previous Euros best: As Serbia, this is their first qualification. As part of Serbia & Montenegro, they reached the Euro 2000 quarter-finals.
Squad notes: The squad has members playing club football in Austria, the Czech Republic, England, Germany, Greece, Italy, Russia, Saudi Arabia (with Sergej Milinković-Savić and Aleksandar Mitrović’s wages at Al Hilal adjusted in the model to reflect that they are being paid more highly than they would be in Europe), Serbia, Spain and Turkey. Their average age is 28, with five players over 30, and captain Dušan Tadić the oldest at 35.
England 🏴
Coach: Gareth Southgate, English, 53.
Star man (in £ terms): Jude Bellingham.
Other star men: Most capped: Harry Kane (91). Most goals: Kane (63). Young guns (best players under 23): Bellingham, Bukayo Saka, Cole Palmer, Kobbie Mainoo, Adam Wharton.
Previous Euros best: Runners-up: 2021 (Euro 2020). Third place: 1996, 1968.
Squad notes: England have more of their squad members playing in their own country (24) than any other nation competing at Euro 2024. All of those 24 play at Premier League clubs. The other two members of the squad are Harry Kane, one of the best players and the highest scorer in the Bundesliga in 2023-24, and Jude Bellingham, one of the best players in La Liga in 2023-24. The average age of the England squad is 26.55, which is young set against their rivals, with three players over 30 and another three who are 30, and no fewer than seven aged 23 or under.
Group C overview
Of the 20 most valuable players in Group C, no fewer than 16 of them are English, with all the top 20 worth at least £40m. Details follow.
As you can see in the graphic below, the England squad’s collective insurable value is almost quadruple that of their nearest Group C rivals. The graphic also contains:
The total squad value for each nation
How our data ranks them
How the bookmakers reckon they will perform
Each nation’s world ranking (which is an average of No29, and therefore a middling group
Thomas Hitzlsperger’s picks for group winner and runner-up
The value of each nation’s MVP by insurable value
There’s also a projected final table for the group, and beneath the graphic we’ll explore how a nation with a more expensive squad won’t necessarily field the higher value team in any given game.