Former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has named his home country, France, as the ‘super favourites’ for this summer’s delayed European Championship, but insisted Gareth Southgate’s England can topple them.
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The 2020 Euros, being played a year later, are set to kick off later this week and will be hosted by several countries throughout the continent.
England will come into this illustrious tournament in decent form having recently claimed two friendly victories over both Austria (1-0) and Romania (1-0).
The Three Lions are in the competition’s Group D and will be joined by Czech Republic, 2018 World Cup finalists Croatia and bitter-rivals Scotland.
Speaking recently to Sky Sports, the popular ex-Gunners manager has admitted that Didier Deschamps’ Les Bleus are his ‘super favourites’ to go on and add to their 2018 World Cup victory.
However, the retired Frenchman has not ruled England out and even suggested it could finally be the tournament where the Three Lions end their agonising 55-year-long wait for a major international trophy.
“They [France] are not the favourites,” Wenger said. “They are the super favourite. Favourite is not big enough, because when you win the World Cup and then you have in your team (N’Golo) Kante, (Paul) Pogba, (Karim) Benzema, (Antoine) Griezmann, (Kingsley) Coman, (Olivier) Giroud, I forget half of them. (Ousmane) Dembele.
“You will have on the bench 11 players who would play basically in any other national team. So you cannot refuse the fact that you are world champion and it’s a team which has not peaked.
“It’s a team that’s still going up, because they’re all young these guys. Apart from two or three, the core of the team is very young.
“The English team is the team who can most threaten France. They have top quality players. They are maybe still a bit young, some of them, but with Mason Mount, (Phil) Foden, (Jack) Grealish, Declan Rice and of course Harry Kane and some experienced players like (Jordan) Henderson, they can compete with France.”