A preview of Belgium's clash with surprise package Romania in Group E at Euro 2024.

The tournament kicks off on Thursday. How will the USMNT fare? Who will surprise? Who will crash out early? And who will win it all?Is your house split between two teams? Share your Copa drama with us Argentina. Lionel Messi may no longer be the best player in the world, but he’s still among the best players in this tournament. Pair his rote brilliance with a team who have proven their ability to win tournaments and you have a successful title defense on your hands. Jon Arnold Continue reading...

Supporter hit during warm-up before Scotland gameFan missed match after being taken out on stretcher A Germany fan missed the hosts’ Euro 2024 tournament opener against Scotland on Friday after his left hand was broken by a wayward shot from the Germany striker Niclas Füllkrug during the warmup. Kai Flathmann was sitting to the side of one of the goals before his team’s 5-1 demolition of Scotland when he was hit by an effort from Füllkrug which went wide. Continue reading...

The US has a squad full of players from Europe’s top leagues. But Gregg Berhalter’s side have continually struggled against top competitionSign up to Jonathan’s weekly newsletter here The theory always was that what the USMNT needed was for more of their players to be playing with the best in Europe. Good, tough, regular competition, proper professional training, exposure to best practice at the highest level the game has ever known. That was what would transform the raw material the US produces into a genuinely top-level side that might be able to compete regularly with the world’s elite. Practice is never that straightforward. The friendly against Colombia earlier this month was the first time the US had been able to field a starting XI all of whom play in the top flight of the Big Five European leagues (there’s a quibble over whether France can really be included in that grouping or whether Portugal or the Netherlands is more worthy, but let’s go with it for now as a useful shorthand to denote high European level). Was this then to be the breakout, the moment at which the US finally became a major world power in the men’s game? This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition Continue reading...

Goalkeeper gained non-league experience while at Everton before returning home to build an international career When Everton felt their teenage goalkeeper Jindrich Stanek needed a taste of men’s football to test himself, they searched around the north-west for a club willing to give him an opportunity. Seventh-tier Hyde United offered him the chance to gain experience and he soon learned the harsh realities of that level, making two mistakes to give away goals in the opening 45 minutes of his debut at Blyth Spartans and witnessing a teammate being sent off. Things could only get better. Stanek made four further appearances for Hyde in 2015-16, winning the final three as he brought a touch of quality to Tameside in a depressing season for a club who went on to be relegated. His brief spell as a 19-year-old at Ewen Fields is a long way from being the Czech Republic’s No 1 at the Euros, where Stanek is poised to start against Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal on Tuesday night, but it was a significant one. Continue reading...

The captain has a newfound confidence as a result of his move to Bayern Munich and his stunning goalscoring form As Harry Kane acknowledged last September, as he settled into his new life at Bayern Munich, there was certainly a script to be written. The Champions League final was in his home city of London. The European Championship was in Germany. The dream double was on. “If there’s someone out there writing a movie … I will try and do my best to make it happen,” Kane said on the eve of England’s qualifying tie against Ukraine in Poland. Nobody even mentioned the Bundesliga title to him because Bayern had won 11 in a row and, well, you know … Continue reading...

Squad has been rocked by injuries to key midfielders but coach is quietly optimistic going into opener against Poland “Welkom Oranje!” is the loud Dutch welcome on billboards dotted around the factory town of Wolfsburg, home to the Netherlands for the next few weeks; many of Ronald Koeman’s side have a direct view of the steaming chimneys of the mammoth Volkswagen plant – the size of about 700 football pitches – from their plush hotel rooms opposite. Those words sit above what can only be described as a little friendly one-upmanship from the locals. “Aber nach Berlin fahren wir”, but we are going to Berlin, which will host Euro 2024’s showpiece finale. That all feels a while away yet but the Netherlands will board a Deutsche Bahn train – hopefully theirs runs on time – to the capital for their final Group D match, against Austria, by which point they will hope to have proved why they, too, can go the distance despite the endless injury-shaped hiccups that hampered preparations. First they have an opener against Poland in Hamburg on Sunday to navigate. Regardless, back home the mood is bright if not realistic, evidenced by the colourful Marktwegt street in The Hague, which has been given considerably more than a lick of paint by residents intent on showing their support. Continue reading...

Forward says National Rally must be denied power‘We all need to fight daily so that this doesn’t happen’ The France forward Marcus Thuram has urged his fellow citizens “to fight daily” to prevent the surging nationalist far right from taking power in the snap parliamentary elections in his country. Thuram spoke during a Euro 2024 news conference in Germany on Saturday, two days after his teammate Ousmane Dembélé implored people to vote in the elections called by the president, Emmanuel Macron, which will take place over two rounds on 30 June and 7 July. Continue reading...

The midfield icon will be 39 in September and this will surely be his last tournament but he isn’t ready to talk about swan songs just yet Back in the day, you might not even have labelled Luka Modric as “one to watch”. The midfielder was in Germany in 2006 for his first major tournament but had only just squeezed into the World Cup squad. If you had to pick a rising star from that Croatia roster, you probably would not have gone with him. Modric was 20 and had established himself at Dinamo Zagbreb after loans at Zrinjski in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Premijer liga and Inter Zapresic, a small club from a western Zagreb suburb. He had made his Croatia debut in March of that year in a 3-2 friendly win over Argentina but anyone trying to identify the country’s next big thing was more likely to have settled on Niko Kranjcar. Continue reading...

Luciano Spalletti’s views on games consoles, rather than his tactics, have dominated buildup to opener against Albania The six football “commandments” pinned to the whiteboard at Italy’s Coverciano training base before they departed for Germany made no mention of PlayStations or headphones. What they listed instead was a series of guiding principles for how the European champions should defend their title on the pitch. 1) Continuous pressing. 2) Control the play (ball management). 3) Tied together (distances between teammates: short, close). 4) Ferocious reaggression (when the ball is lost). 5) Recomposition (get back to your places). 6) Order, study, and prepare (to get back to pressing). Continue reading...

Head coach Vincenzo Montella has transformed the team, trusting in youngsters such as Arda Guler This article is part of the Guardian’s Euro 2024 Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 24 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from two countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 14 June. Continue reading...

Viktor Orbán’s country has become an epicentre of nativist thought – the Euro 2024 squad is a counterpoint to that A white, 20-something man, sporting a blue puffer jacket, tight jeans and carbon-grey rectangular sunglasses flaunts a large disc to the camera with a beaming smile: “Woke Zero,” the disc reads. “Woke” on the disc is inscribed with a red flourish in the classic Coca-Cola font. Just to the right, outside a conference-centre room, is a towering sign: “Let’s drain the swamp! WOKEBUSTERS.” For those able to gain entry to the conference room, a who’s who of the anti-globalist elite await. Figures such as the far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders and Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of the former president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, are here delivering talks with titles such as Save the West, Protect the Borders. Continue reading...

Roberto Martínez’s side compiled a perfect record in qualifying and can call on the resurgent Cristiano Ronaldo This article is part of the Guardian’s Euro 2024 Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 24 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from two countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 14 June. Continue reading...

Mainoo, Alexander-Arnold, Gallagher, Wharton, Palmer? England’s final midfield spot remains up for grabs The argument that Gareth Southgate’s refusal to lift the handbrake is the only thing blocking England’s path to glory refuses to go away. Yet before they face Serbia in Gelsenkirchen on Sunday, it is worth asking whether throwing caution to the wind really is the right way forward for a team fretting over a range of defensive concerns and unsure over who should partner Declan Rice in midfield. Of course, there will be those saying that attack is the best form of defence, not least because few countries have as many gifted forwards as England at Euro 2024. For Southgate, perhaps the main task is working out how to fit them all in behind Harry Kane. Phil Foden on the left, Jude Bellingham as the No 10 and Bukayo Saka on the right? It sounds great – but how about Southgate finds a spot for Cole Palmer and leaves Rice to look after all the dirty work in defensive midfield? Continue reading...