David Seaman is convinced there is better to come from England after they safely negotiated their passage into the knockout stage at Euro 2024.
Gareth Southgate’s men were already assured of a place in the last 16 before Tuesday night’s 0-0 draw with against Slovenia secured top spot in Group C and a last-16 date in Gelsenkirchen on Sunday.
Another laboured performance came against the backdrop of sustained criticism following a 1-0 win over Serbia and a 1-1 draw with Denmark in their opening fixtures, but former Three Lions keeper Seaman is confident the Euro 2020 runners-up they will grow into the tournament.
Asked if he was optimistic, the 60-year-old told the PA news agency: “Yes, definitely. It’s going to get better. I’m not going to say it can’t get any worse because it wasn’t that bad, but we all know that we can play a lot better than we have done.
“It’s about peaking at the right time. It’s about getting into the knockout stages and then getting better and better. Nobody remembers who you play in the qualifying stages, it’s all about who you beat in the knockouts.”
England’s early performances were roundly criticised by TV pundits, among them Seaman’s former international team-mates Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer, prompting a strong response from skipper Harry Kane.
However the former Arsenal keeper, who expressed surprise at some of the reaction, remains firmly behind Southgate.
He said: “He’s got a plan. He know what he needs to do, he knows what he wants the team to do. Okay, they’ve not been doing it as well as he would have wanted them to do, but there’s a plan there.
“We know how we can play – we’ve done it before. We’ve played in big pressure moments, not so much as getting the negative side of it, but we just need to focus a little bit more and get back to playing how we do rather than worrying about everything else.
“I’ve got nothing but praise for [Southgate] because we are now at a stage where we go into the tournament and we are now favourites or joint-favourites, and rightly so. The way that he’s got our team playing and the players that we’ve got is testament to him.”
Seaman’s comments came as he responded to data produced on behalf of Euro 2024 official partner Hisense analysing penalty shoot-outs from every European Champions finals since 1976.
He famously starred in England’s quarter-final shoot-out victory over Spain, in which Stuart Pearce exorcised the ghost of his miss in the 1990 World Cup semi-final defeat by West Germany, but also suffered the misery of defeat from the spot by the Germans in the next round and by Argentina at the World Cup finals two years later.
Jordan Pickford is the man currently in possession, and Seaman is backing Everton’s number one, who saved from Andrea Belotti and Jorginho in the shoot-out against Italy in the Euro 2020 final and still came away with a runners-up medal, to shine once again if called upon.
He said: “I felt sorry for him in the Euros because he saved two in the shoot-out and was on the losing team. That just shows you, the life of a goalkeeper can be so up and down and it’s about being lucky sometimes.”
* David Seaman has teamed up with Hisense, the Official Partner of UEFA EURO 2024 and number 1 TV manufacturer of 100” TVs, as part of its ‘Perfect Penalty’ campaign.