Gareth Southgate admitted Spain were deserving winners of Euro 2024, saying La Roja were the best team in the final against England.
Spain were triumphant in all seven games in Germany on their way to winning the trophy, but England took La Roja to the limit, losing 2-1 in the end following Mikel Oyarzabal’s late winner.
“As always in these games, it’s fine margins. But I think they were the best team in the tournament and over the piece they deserved to win,” Southgate said.
“We’ve competed until the very end of the final. I think today we didn’t keep possession of the ball quite well enough.
“They press you really well and you’ve got to get out of that pressure and we weren’t able to do that and in the end that meant they had more control of the game, and that can wear you down a bit.
“That said, we were still right in there when we get the equaliser, so the game was still wide open.”
Southgate — hoping to hand England a first major international trophy since their 1966 World Cup win, declined to comment on what the future holds.
“It’s going to take a while to pick all the bones out of it really,” he said, speaking of the disappointing performance of captain Harry Kane who looked off and was eventually substituted.
“Physically, it’s been a tough period for him. He came in short of games and not quite got up to the level we’d have all hoped,” Southgate added.
Kane was equally disappointed with his performance on the night too while also admitting the players would like for Southgate to stay.
“Losing in a final is as tough as it gets. We did really well to get back into the game, to get to 1-1. We could have used that momentum to push on. We couldn’t quite keep the ball and we got punished for it,” he said.
“It’s as painful as it could be in a football match, It’s the last stage of the tournament. There’s a lot of tired legs, a lot of tired mentality there, It’s a huge disappointment.
“We’ve made it clear we love the manger, that’s his decision, this is not the time to talk about that now. That’s down to him. He’ll go away and think about it. Right now we’re all just hurting,” he said.
