England-Denmark: Euro 2020 Live Updates

England wears its years of hurt on its backs.

It has been striking, whenever England fans have gathered over the course of the last month, how many have eschewed the current iteration of the national team’s jersey and chosen instead an older number: most frequently a blue one, flecked with white, that served as backup to the backup in the early 1990s, and an effort from soccer’s “gray period,” when the overriding logic ran that the color looked good with jeans.

Strictly speaking, both shirts are associated with unhappy memories: the semifinal elimination by West Germany at the 1990 World Cup and the semifinal elimination by a united Germany six years later in the European Championship, both on penalties. But the jerseys are also proof of credentials, proof of authenticity, proof of having shared in the suffering of the two defeats which best define the inevitable and yet somehow cherished disappointment of being an England fan.

Even as the country has slowly allowed itself to be swept away — a cliff giving itself to the sea — over the last three weeks, as the prospect of only the second major final in its never-knowingly-undersold history has reared up ever higher in the popular imagination, some of that spirit has remained.

There is, deep down, a sort of irony to England’s excitement, an awareness that this will probably all go wrong at any minute, an expectation of the worst even as the country hopes for the best, that at some point in the future a new generation of fans will be wearing this year’s away jersey to prove that it, too, has suffered.

And yet this is, without question, the best chance the country has had for half a century not just to make a final, but to win a trophy. It is on home turf. It is, on paper at least, more than a match for an exceptionally well-drilled, impressively slick Danish team, just as it was better equipped than Ukraine and Germany in previous rounds. It would be favorite in a final even against a young and spirited Italy.

There is a distinct possibility that this excitement does not have to be ironic, that things will not go wrong. But that is not how England thinks, not really. All those years of hurt have conditioned the country to dream, but never truly to believe. Beat Denmark and that, perhaps, will have to change.

England makes one change to its starting lineup to face Denmark, restoring the 19-year-old Bukayo Saka (who had a minor injury ahead of the quarterfinals) and dropping Jadon Sancho to make room for him.

No reason for Gareth Southgate to change anything else, really. Not with the way his team has been playing. But expect much hand-wringing over the change on English Twitter.

England’s starting XI:

Jordan Pickford; Kyle Walker, John Stones, Harry Maguire, Luke Shaw; Kalvin Phillips, Declan Rice; Bukayo Saka, Mason Mount, Raheem Sterling; Harry Kane

No surprises for Denmark, either. Coach Kasper Hjulmand sticks with the same XI he sent out for the victory against the Czech Republic in the quarterfinals:

Kasper Schmeichel; Andreas Christensen, Simon Kjaer, Jannick Vestergaard; Jens Stryger Larsen, Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, Thomas Delaney, Joakim Maehle; Martin Braithwaite, Kasper Dolberg, Mikkel Damsgaard

Christian Eriksen has been on the minds of many in Denmark since he collapsed face-first to the turf during his team’s opening game at Euro 2020. Returning to Wembley on Wednesday brought new emotions.

Eriksen knew the stadium well from his days at Tottenham Hotspur, and he scored a penalty kick there last October when Denmark beat England, 1-0, in a UEFA Nations League game.

“I’ve talked to him and I’ve told him so many times that I think about him,” Denmark Coach Kasper Hjulmand said. “Even when we got in here, I thought that we would play at Wembley and at his old stadium.

“So he is with us. And we still play for him, there is no doubt about that.”

Eriksen and some of the paramedics who saved his life when he collapsed and went into cardiac arrest during a first-round game against Finland have been invited to Sunday’s final at Wembley. While at least one of the medics said he would go, it is unclear if Eriksen, who has been recuperating at home, will be there.

“I hope that if he comes to the final that we are going to be playing it,” Denmark coach Kasper Hjulmand said. “It would be amazing.”

LONDON — British newspapers called for their “heroes” to roar, while the BBC wondered throughout the day whether England could “make history.”

A win over Denmark at Euro 2020 on Wednesday would take England to its first final of a major soccer tournament in more than half a century, and that prospect has raised hopes that the nation — which loves to boast about inventing the sport of soccer — might not be positioned to stand atop it again.

On Wednesday, tens of thousands of fans arrived at Wembley Stadium for the match, and pubs and bars and streets were filling across England, even as the authorities urged fans to respect restrictions in place for the coronavirus pandemic.

“Today is the day,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson — not an avid soccer fan usually — wrote on Twitter. “Come on England!”

In England, the Three Lions, as the national team is sometimes known, have gained widespread popularity for what the players represent, an impressive and diverse squad of top players from the nation’s best clubs. They have taken the knee against racism before games, and served as a unifying force in a country that Brexit and recent elections have left deeply divided.

“The prize is one that we’ve never experienced,” England’s manager, Gareth Southgate, said at a news conference on Tuesday. “We don’t have as good a footballing history as we like to believe sometimes.”

The Danes have noticed. Denmark also has high hopes on Wednesday, and plans to reach its second final in the Euros since it stunningly won the tournament as a last-minute replacement in 1992.

So forgive its players if they don’t want to hear about how the trophy may be “coming home.”

“Has it ever been home?” Denmark goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel said wryly to a British journalist who asked about the phrase on Tuesday. “I don’t know, have you ever won it?”

Like England, Denmark has begun to believe it has fate on its side. The Danes lost their opening two matches at Euro 2020, but defeated Russia to advance out of their first-round group and then beat Wales and the Czech Republic in the knockout rounds.

“It’s very difficult to quantify it,” Coach Kasper Hjulmand said. “I think we were in a very, very good position when we started the tournament, we were well prepared.”

Rory Smith previewed Italy on the eve of the tournament because it had pledged to arrive with an entirely new vibe: one built on fun, and bolstered by defensive organization, instead of the other way around. And for five games, Italy provided just that.

But when Rory caught up with Italy at Wembley on Tuesday, he found it reached back into its past just when it needed to do so.

Italy has not played to stereotype these last three weeks. It arrived at Euro 2020 in a curious position: unbeaten in 27 games, a run stretching back a couple of years, but not among the pack of favorites. France, England, Portugal and Belgium were all under considerably more pressure. Whatever happened, its coach Roberto Mancini vowed that it would be “fun.”

He was as good as his word, for those first forays at least. Turkey, Switzerland and Wales were swept aside, imperiously, on home territory in Rome. Austria was, eventually, overpowered in the round of 16. A brilliant spell of 15 or 20 minutes took Mancini’s team past Belgium, officially ranked as the world’s best side. This was Italy stripped of the stress of expectation, and imbued with freedom.

But it was not that sense of adventure, that freshly inculcated and deliberately nurtured spirit of gioia di vivere, that allowed Italy to take the final step. Spain, even an iteration of Spain that remains a work in progress, was always likely to require a display of what might diplomatically be called more traditional Italian virtues: obduracy and indomitability, organization and guile, gritted teeth and strained sinews.

It may yet rank as Mancini’s greatest achievement, in his three years in charge of his national side, that he has managed to retain those traits while reducing Italy’s reliance on them.

Today’s referee is a police inspector from the Netherlands, Danny Makkelie. He will be a familiar face to England’s players, having worked their victory against Germany in the round of 16, and to others on both teams who have run across him in the top league in the Netherlands and various European competitions.

Wednesday’s semifinal will be Makkelie’s fourth match in the tournament, but he has been busy in those, awarding 12 yellow cards — but no reds yet — in his first three games.

Three England starters — Kalvin Phillips, Declan Rice and Harry Maguire — got a close-up view of his yellow card in the Germany game.

England’s four goals against Ukraine in the team’s quarterfinal were its highest total in a match at a major tournament since the 1966 World Cup final. As omens go, that’s not a terrible one for Gareth Southgate’s team on Wednesday, or as they take aim at Sunday’s final.

But England also is the only team in Euro 2020 that has not allowed an opposing goal.

Denmark can score from many places, though: Its 11 goals in the tournament, which were second only to (now departed) Spain entering the semifinals, were scored by seven players. And like England, Denmark is hitting its scoring stride: 10 of its 11 goals in the tournament have come in its three most recent games.

Denmark also has some recent history to call upon: The teams played twice in the UEFA Nations League last year, with Denmark earning a scoreless tie at home and a 1-0 victory (courtesy of a Christian Eriksen penalty) at Wembley.

“Denmark are a great team,” said England striker Harry Kane, who played in both games. “But we need to try to focus on ourselves; it is a semifinal at our national stadium and we’ve got to use all those positives to worry about us.”

Expect to hear the name Jack Grealish quite a bit today.

England has spent a lot of time, over the last year or so, thinking about Jack Grealish. At first, it was in the context of one of those classic English either/or debates, the sort of complex issue boiled down to a simple binary that fills all those quiet hours of radio and litters message boards and allows columnists to fulminate and encourages readers to click, click, click.

Should England Manager Gareth Southgate call up Grealish — the 25-year-old captain of Aston Villa, his boyhood team — or James Maddison, 24, the Leicester City playmaker with the slicked-back hair?

The answer, obviously, could have been both, or neither, or “well, they’re very different players and so this is a bit like asking whether England should play Harry Kane or a goalkeeper.” But that did not matter. What mattered was the question: Grealish, Maddison, either, or?

Southgate, not especially conveniently, settled that one a few weeks ago, when Grealish made his squad for Euro 2020 and Maddison did not. Smoothly, the debate shifted to acknowledge the updated circumstances. Grealish did not appear at all in England’s opening game against Croatia. Should Southgate be picking him? He was only a substitute against Scotland. Should he be starting? He was in the team against the Czech Republic. Should he not be the centerpiece of the side?

And then, 20 minutes or so into the second half of England’s round of 16 game with Germany on Tuesday, as Wembley was starting to fret about extra time and penalties and we all know how that ends against the Germans, the crowd made its verdict known. Pointedly, it started to chant Grealish’s name. It was not meant only as a paean for the player. It was an urgent, unanimous instruction for Southgate.

Hearing his name again and again, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that part of the affection for Grealish comes not from what he does, but who he is, or what he seems to stand for. He is a fine player, to be sure. But he is also something else.

Grealish, compared with much of the England squad, is fresh. He is, to some extent, a blank slate.