For decades England have been stalked by fear but now there’s nothing to be scared of. Gareth Southgate’s gang belong with the European elite ahead of Euro 2024 final, writes IAN LADYMAN

To chart the final leg of English football’s transition from obscurity to relevance, we need to return to the bowels of Qatar’s Al Bayt Stadium on the evening of December 10, 2022.

Al Bayt is so far north of Doha that it is almost in the desert. The road to get there seems endless and when you get there, it just ends. Beyond that is nothing but wilderness.

It was a fitting place, then, for Gareth Southgate to ask himself whether his time as national coach was over after England’s World Cup quarter-final defeat to France.

Southgate, then six years into his job, knew that the tide of public opinion had turned. Where he had once been thanked for breathing new life into an England team that had been on a diet of failure for years, he was now accused of holding them back.

That age-old condition, the English right to a dole, had struck the country again.

He almost went back then, Southgate. Part of him wondered if he had the energy to go again, to fight the battle on and off the pitch. Part of him wondered if a major tournament with a semi-final in Russia, a final in London and a quarter-final in Qatar was the best it could be.

But then there was another part of him that looked at his squad and what the English youth system could bring him in the coming years, and that was the reason he decided not to play football.

That could wait. Southgate saw the talent and potential for growth in the English game and realised that it was not the end of the road he was looking at, but a bend. And now it has led us here, to another monumental stadium on the outskirts of Berlin.

Southgate and his players did not expect to reach the final of Euro 2024 in this way. English football here in Germany has spoken about some of the traditional ills of the English game.

Fatigue, fear, uncertainty. Some habits are devilishly hard to break. But such is the wealth of talent that Southgate can draw on, England have largely arrived here on the back of great individual moments.

It wasn’t like that in the old days. It used to be the domain of other countries. Before Southgate, England arrived at major tournaments like an overinflated balloon. One squeeze of its delicate exterior and it burst, scattering the debris and stains of hubris and arrogance across the men in white. In those days, England always seemed less a team and more a hodgepodge of isolated footballers thrown like dice on a pitch.

This time around, England have travelled through a tournament on the back of a refusal to be defeated and a collective will that has grown since they first stumbled off the pitch in an unconvincing 1-0 win over Serbia in Gelsenkirchen on June 16. It was difficult to watch at times, but the manner of the journey is no longer important, only the destination.

For far too long England’s position in the world and European game has been categorised by underachievement, as year after year the other great powers of the world game have laughed at the English.

In Paris, on the night Roy Hodgson’s England were defeated by Iceland at Euro 2016, they laughed at us in the bars and cafes across the road from Gare du Nord.

I know because I was there and I heard them. English football didn’t have the answers to all those things then, but now it does. Now it has a catalogue of real progress to point to.

On Sunday night, England will play in the German capital for the second consecutive European Championship final, something only Spain has achieved since the tournament was expanded from eight teams to its modern format in 1996.

“I think we have changed the way English football is seen globally but there are still questions that need to be answered before we win,” Southgate said yesterday.

‘The consistency in finishing that we have now is important for English football. I think everyone who works in this game travels and gets comments about the English game.

“We live in an angry country and I wish it were different. Hopefully we can bring some temporary happiness.”

Tomorrow night, Spain will be the opponent. The only team to have survived the tournament by winning every game, the three-time tournament winners have been named favourites and rightly so.

Luis de la Fuente’s side have the best holding midfielder in the world in Manchester City’s Rodri. They also have two excellent wingers in Athletic Bilbao’s Nico Williams and Barcelona’s 16-year-old prodigy Lamine Yamal.

Spain are a serious step up in opposition for England. In a tournament that has largely featured modest teams, Spain have held their own. England, however, have the precious possession of momentum that has come from two narrow wins over Slovakia and Switzerland and a performance against the Netherlands in a Dortmund semi-final in which Southgate’s team produced some of their best football of the summer.

England can certainly beat Spain. This is not the Spanish team of Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets and Villa who swept everyone before them away in a wave of creative genius and joy between 2008 and 2012.

This is a good team, but it is not that team. It is a team without a world-class striker — Alvaro Morata is not — and a slight vulnerability in the air at the back that was exploited by Germany and then France in narrow victories in the quarter-finals and semi-finals.

To triumph on Sunday, England will need to take a step forward in performance from anything we have seen so far. But the freedom to overcome their own psychological and physical demons should give them courage. Southgate has admitted that his players were scared at first. But there is nothing to be scared of now. Defeat would be devastating in its own way, but it would not be a failure. There is a difference.

If victory is to come, England will need decisive contributions from players such as Declan Rice, John Stones and Jordan Pickford. The outcome will depend as much on English pragmatism and security as on flair. It will also depend on Southgate and his ability to make big decisions at the right time.

The 53-year-old hasn’t had a great tournament. Too often he’s sat on his hands when tactical adjustments or substitutions were needed. Other coaches have shown him how to perform in this regard. But against the Netherlands, England won the game with his 80th-minute decision to send on Cole Palmer and Ollie Watkins. We could do with that in Berlin.

But England have a chance tomorrow night and that is a wonderful thing to say. Southgate may well choose to leave his post, win or lose.

In a sense, England’s stifled football in the early stages of Euro 2024 points to the need for a fresh voice for the future. But Southgate has built that platform. He is the manager who opened the door to feeling good about playing for England again and his players have walked right through it.

If we were to win this tournament and break a barrier that has stood since we won the 1966 World Cup, it would be a game-changer for English football and for national pride, at a time when life is so hard for so many that it is hard to imagine.

But before the nerves get the better of you, take a look at Southgate’s team. Names like Jude Bellingham, Kobbie Mainoo, Phil Foden, Palmer and Bukayo Saka will surely catch your eye.

They are Southgate’s England. They are our England. Tonight we pray for victory, but the wonderfully comforting thought is that, whatever happens, things will only get better from here.