​In Euro 2016, England looked set for a quarter-final in Paris after a looming clash with France. Yet that plan collapsed when their last-16 match against Iceland became one of the most humiliating days in the history of the national team. It proved to be a turning point in several ways. Roy Hodgson stepped aside, choosing not to scout Iceland in person and instead join his assistant Ray Lewington on a boat trip on the Seine that would become infamous. Since then, England have gone five for five. When Thomas Tuchel’s team arrives in Miami, that will mark a fifth consecutive quarter-final. No other nation has reached the last eight in each of the last three World Cups and two European Championships.
Much of the credit for this sustained run rests with Gareth Southgate and his run of quarter-final appearances. England have become a side that expects to travel deep into tournaments. A shift in mentality coincided with a tendency to start well, and in the Tuchel era’s World Cup cycle, England have topped the group in their last four tournaments, with just one loss in 15 pool games. Securing the group often provides the easiest route to the quarter-finals; the lone exception came in 2018, when England did not win the group but still found a more straightforward path to the last four because reigning champions Germany, their planned quarter-final opponents, were eliminated in the group stage.
Historically, England have produced different kinds of quarter-final teams. In the past decade, they have become one able to advance from the stage: beat Norway and they will have won four out of five. Before that, their quarter-final appearances often represented a glass ceiling. When Southgate’s side defeated Sweden in 2018, it marked England’s first quarter-final win in 22 years, their first on foreign soil in 28 and in 90 minutes since 1966.
Gareth Southgate’s embrace of Bukayo Saka after England beat Switzerland in the Euro 2024 quarter-finals (Getty) symbolised a break with the past, and not merely because, after Sven-Goran Eriksson’s three straight quarter-finals, England would have only one more until 2018. The last decade demonstrates that, even without winning major honours, England have become adept at navigating knockout formats and competitions in general. It helps explain why some of the most impressive records held by England players in the business end of tournaments belong to figures such as Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham, Declan Rice, John Stones, and Jordan Pickford.
And yet it is also telling whom England have beaten in these quarter-finals. Under Southgate, their victims have been Sweden, Ukraine, and Switzerland—none of the traditional European superpowers. Tuchel now faces Norway, who defeated Italy in qualifying and Brazil in the last 16, a side that boasts one of the world’s finest strikers in Erling Haaland and arguably one of the top 10 international teams today; and yet it is a team not previously seen at this stage. There can be a self-perpetuating element to success: the countries that win quarter-finals often gain better search engine optimization and recognition.