Greg Dyke is bullish about England's prospects of escaping their tricky group in Euro 2016. The FA Chairman is adamant that England must reach the second phase at least.
He can't contemplate failure.
He can't contemplate failure to such an extent that he announced yesterday that 'we’ll all shoot ourselves if we don’t get out of the group'. This a group which also contains Russia, Slovakia and Wales.
We've got to get out of that group. If we don't, that really is bad news for English football.
His view tallies with others in English football. As soon as the draw was made, Gary Lineker inquired as to who England would be facing the second round.
Slovakia!! Right who do England meet in the last 16?
— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) December 12, 2015
Dyke's confident proclamations did not end there. Not only does he regard escaping from Group B a borderline inevitability but he insisted that England would win the World Cup 'one day soon'.
If they are at their best in their mid-twenties then Qatar (in 2022), assuming it is held there in November-December, is a much better opportunity for England than the end of a very long English season. So I feel more optimistic now.
I genuinely believe the building blocks are in place to one day soon emulate the ’66 winners. We owe it to them. We owe it to a generation of teenage dreamers to show we can do it again...
We should have won a tournament in the last 50 years. We haven't. But we will win in the next 50 years, hopefully long before.
