It’s 2028, and England are under the charge of an innovative hybrid manager created by making a digital copy of Jurgen Klopp’s brain and inserting it directly into Gareth Southgate’s on a microchip.
In a disastrous backfire, the manager’s tactics remain the same, but now he wears a hat and complains about the schedule a lot more. Yet as we well know by now, that’s actually fine – and Gargen Southklopp has taken England to a third straight European Championship final. But what team is he going to pick?
Let’s just acknowledge right off the bat that predicting a line-up for the weekend is challenging enough, let alone trying to take into account 50 players’ potential future career trajectories to decide on a team that might play for England in a game they’re by no means going to qualify for in four years’ time.
Right? So we’re all agreed this is just a bit of fun, right? And when you’re sitting there in July 2028, laughing at how thick we were in the past, just remember that you too are ageing towards the grave with every passing second and will be wrong plenty of times before you get there. As we say: a bit of fun.
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Predicted England line-up for the Euro 2028 final
We’ve gone for a 4-2-3-1 purely because picking defenders instead of wingers for a nonsensical and purely hypothetical side four years in the future is really boring and stupid, and we only ever want to be one of those things at a time.
GK: Jordan Pickford: 34 is no real age for a goalkeeper is it? And he’s still never really seriously let England down yet. Plus, if it goes to penalties, who do you want in nets? Precisely.
RB: Rico Lewis: England continue to have a real glut of good right-backs, but it’s hard to think a 19 year old who made 27 appearances for Manchester City last season isn’t going to go on and establish himself as first-choice right back sometime in the next four years. Poor Trent Alexander-Arnold, a man consistently in the wrong place at the wrong time for England.
CB: Marc Guehi: The most delightful surprise of Euro 2024, and already England’s most-capped centre-back who is likely to be at all viable by 2028, unless you fancy seeing what Birmingham City’s 35-year-old Harry Maguire or 34-year-old Barnsley player-manager John Stones looks like in a Euros final. Which actually, we do.
CB: Levi Colwill: I will admit an incredible bias in Colwill’s favour here having adored him since seeing him make his senior debut for Huddersfield Town in 2021, but we also think he’s just very, very, very good and has the right character to potentially captain this side at the 2030 World Cup.
Being a left-footed centre-back goes a long way, particularly if you wanted to change tack and shift to a back three. The main thing going against this partnership is that it robs us of potential buddy cop duo Quansah & Konsa, who make excellent options from the bench.
LB: Lewis Hall: England still don’t have tons of left-backs coming through, and Hall isn’t even really a left-back by trade at youth level – he’s a central midfielder – but his Trentification into one is already well under way in 2024 and may well be unstoppable, at least for the national team. Juventus’ Samuel Iling-Junior may be an alternative in a wing-back system.
CM: Kobbie Mainoo: Even at 19 years old, it felt like it took Southgate several games too many to pick Mainoo as his first-choice partner to Declan Rice. There are several other youngsters vying for his spot, but he’s ahead of them now despite being the youngest of the lot. Either he’d have to really Jack Wilshere it from here, or someone else is going to be so brilliant that nobody minds Mainoo’s harsh omission.
CM: Declan Rice: Already one of the elder statesmen of the England camp, and it’s hard to see any of his more senior outfielders making it through another four years without dropping to the bench. Rice will only be 29 by the time the next (next) Euros final rolls around, a real testament to his consistent ability to age by exactly one year per year since 1999.
RW: Bukayo Saka: He’s 22 now, in 2024. 22! Plus: loads of the other options coming through prefer to play on the left. We wouldn’t rule out Jadon Sancho retaining his mojo, but Saka has the greater track record of coming up with the goods for England.
AM: Jude Bellingham: I mean, obviously.
LW: Phil Foden: The year is 2028. England are going to a major tournament and are desperate to get Phil Foden into the team, hoping against hope that after all these years he might actually be as good for England as he is for Manchester City. Every suggestion is that playing him on the left wing next to Bellingham doesn’t work.
In every single game, Foden starts on the left wing next to Bellingham, despite England having so many good left wingers that they’ve controversially left Morgan Rogers at home. Will Gargen never learn?
CF: Cole Palmer: De-fault: the two sweetest words in the English language. We toyed with a resurgent Marcus Rashford for this role, but it feels like a lot would have to go right for that to happen. 32-year-old Ollie Watkins has lost a yard of pace, another 32 year old in Ivan Toney hasn’t looked the same since getting his big move to Arsenal in summer 2026.
Harry Kane, now back with mid-table Tottenham, fell out of favour a couple of years back after scoring just 19 goals in two seasons, but has at least finally learned to keep his mouth closed now and then after comically playing for eight months with one of those big over-the-face braces.
Kane’s replacement at club level, Will Lankshear, has hit promising form towards the end of the season, leading to The Clamour for him to start, but the tournament has come just too soon. With England producing approximately 427 wingers and no other centre-forwards, Southklopp instead opts to play Palmer as a false 9 as basically the least worst of his options.
Subs: Aaron Ramsdale, Charlie Setford, Ezri Konsa, Jarell Quansah, Jarrad Branthwaite, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Samuel Iling-Junior, Adam Wharton, Curtis Jones, Morgan Gibbs-White, Jamie Bynoe-Gittens, Anthony Gordon, Jadon Sancho, Harry Kane, Will Lankshear, Phil Neville.
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