England v Spain LIVE: Euro 2024 final team news and latest updates from Berlin

Now that Gareth Southgate sits in the Blankenhain base talking about how England might win a European Championship final, he can make an admission. “There was a danger”, as he puts it, that this Euro 2024 campaign and his entire managerial tenure could have unravelled. There was certainly a risk of the “doom and gloom” engulfing the squad.

“But,” Southgate adds, “I was determined to confront it.” That went way beyond walking towards the beer cups being thrown after the 0-0 draw with Slovenia, although he still feels that was crucial “because we fought too hard to change the environment for the players”. More important was to actually work through what was going wrong – “a coaching challenge. That wasn’t necessarily on the training ground.” It involved showing the players what they were actually doing on video, and comparing it to their instructions. There was also just a photo.

“We’ve just drawn against Denmark, they’re on two points, we’re on four, they’re celebrating with their fans, we’re on our knees.”

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

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.

Never more than when England are in a tournament, the mantra of ‘Scouse, not English’ is heard as justification for not getting behind the Three Lions in some quarters of Liverpool.

But it appears the Basque Autonomous Community have the same attitude to the Spanish national team.

One Atheltic Bilbao fan X account wrote: “If you don’t go with England this Sunday you don’t like football.”

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.

England v Spain is a tough match to call on Sunday but there is one contest for which we already know the result. The BBC and ITV will both broadcast the Euro 2024 final live, and the BBC is set to enjoy a significantly larger share of the viewing figures.

Three years ago, a peak of 31 million people tuned into the Euro 2020 final, which England lost to Italy on penalties. It was the UK’s most-watched TV event since Princess Diana’s funeral and the BBC picked up 25 million (81 per cent) of the audience, compared to ITV’s 5.9 million.

That difference is the natural consequence of trying to push Gillette razors at every possible interval, which seems to include the miniscule gap between national anthems and kick-off these days. But might that ratio shift this time around? Could ITV eat into the BBC’s giant share of the pie?

The official allocation of 10,295 England will be situated behind one of the goals at the Olympiastadion.

Since renovations in 2004, the Olympiastadion has a permanent capacity of 74,475 seats and is the largest stadium in Germany for international football matches.

Despite the reduced view from the running track detaching fans from the action the atmosphere is expected to be feverish for the final.

Other England fans will be dotted around the stadium at different locations.

The Spanish supporters have been allocated their tickets at the opposite end.

For many an England player, winning a major final against Spain and scoring in it would represent a perfect day this weekend. For a couple, it has already happened. Not in a senior European Championships either but a World Cup, albeit at Under-17 level.

Phil Foden got the third and fifth goals, sandwiching a strike by Marc Guehi in a 5-2 win in 2017. “Very good memories,” said the centre-back, studying the footage seven years on. “We were playing against a really good team in Spain.”

As England came from 2-0 down in Kolkata and Gareth Southgate’s team now have conceded first in each of the last 16, the quarter-final and the semi-final before eventually prevailing, the similarities may yet continue. “I remember coming down the tunnel and we had scored just before half-time [through Rhian Brewster] and their heads went down,” Guehi recalled. “I think it was just a moment for us to be vocal and to say, ‘we’ve got this. It’s not going to happen again.’ It just showed the resilience of the team at the time to overcome such a tough moment for us.”

Throughout the tournament, the BBC and ITV have alternated which matches each broadcaster has shown, but both will be showing the final.

Lineker revealed his presenting team on the Rest Is Football podcast, saying: “It’ll be a buzz on the BBC, we’ll all be there.