England National Football Team

England are football's founding nation. The Football Association was founded in October 1863 — the oldest national football association in the world — and the senior team contested the world's first international match against Scotland on 30 November 1872 at Hamilton Crescent in Glasgow. England's sole World Cup title came in 1966, won on home soil at Wembley with Geoff Hurst's hat-trick against West Germany in the final, and the 59-year gap since is the longest tournament-winning drought of any FIFA top-six nation alongside Spain (whose 2010 title broke a similar drought). The Gareth Southgate era from 2016 to 2024 produced England's most consistent recent tournament football: the 2018 World Cup semi-finals, the 2020 Euros final (lost on penalties to Italy at Wembley), the 2022 World Cup quarter-finals, and the 2024 Euros final (lost 2-1 to Spain in Berlin). England became, in 2024, the first nation in history to lose consecutive European Championship finals. The Southgate cycle ended with that defeat and his subsequent resignation; the next chapter began with Thomas Tuchel's appointment in January 2025. Thomas Tuchel, the German Champions League-winning coach formerly of Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea and Bayern Munich, was appointed head coach in January 2025 — the first non-British head coach in 60 years and only the second in English football history. Captain Harry Kane of Bayern Munich is the all-time leading England scorer with 78 international goals. The squad combines Kane with Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid), Phil Foden (Manchester City), Bukayo Saka (Arsenal), Cole Palmer (Chelsea), Declan Rice (Arsenal) and goalkeeper Jordan Pickford. Tuchel's pre-tournament reputation rests on his ability to extract a deeper tournament run from what is widely regarded as the most talented English squad of the modern era.

Geoff Hurst's hat-trick against West Germany in the 1966 World Cup final at Wembley on 30 July 1966 — including the controversial 101st-minute strike that hit the underside of the crossbar and was awarded by a Soviet linesman (the so-called 'Wembley goal') and the closing 120th-minute counter-attack strike with crowds spilling onto the pitch as Kenneth Wolstenholme uttered 'they think it's all over... it is now' on BBC commentary — sealed England's only World Cup title. Hurst remains the only player ever to score a hat-trick in a World Cup final. Diego Maradona's two goals against England in the quarter-final of the 1986 World Cup at the Estadio Azteca on 22 June 1986 — the 'Hand of God' and the 'Goal of the Century', four minutes apart — remain the most-quoted painful moment in English football history. England lost 2-1; Maradona's solo run for the second goal beat five English defenders. The match has subsequently been retrospectively framed as a turning point that aligned with the broader Falklands War tensions four years earlier between the two countries. Diego Maradona's two goals are matched in English footballing trauma only by the 1990 World Cup semi-final penalty shoot-out defeat to West Germany at the Stadio delle Alpi in Turin on 4 July 1990. England led after Andreas Brehme's deflected free-kick made it 1-1 after Gary Lineker had equalised; Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle missed in the shoot-out. The defeat broke the Bobby Robson generation — Gascoigne's tears were televised globally and became the iconic image of the tournament — and inaugurated 36 years of consecutive World Cup knockout exits.