Southgate's legacy will be defined purely by tonight's result in Berlin

Tonight could also be the last game of England manager Gareth Southgate, ITV News' Sport Editor Steve Scott explains

When contemplating his final words to the England squad ahead of the Euro’s final in Berlin, Gareth Southgate could do worse than channeling Barack Obama’s iconic speech in the same city 16 years ago, a few months before he was elected US President.

“Now the world will watch and remember what we do here - what we do with this moment.”

That is exactly where the England manager’s head is right now. A second successive Euros’ final or not, he knows that he and his current team will be defined purely by Sunday’s result in Germany’s capital.

They’re up against every neutral’s favourite, Spain. Simply because they have played the prettiest and most exciting football in a tournament that, let’s be honest, has endured its fair share of turgid, dull and defensive encounters.

So, what do England have to do to smuggle home that elusive silverware, apart of course from playing the game of their lives?

For the players it is impossible to ignore the fact they are standing on the edge of greatness; however cocooned, the enormity of what lies ahead is inescapable.

And it is how each of them wrestles individually with the expectation and pressure, that will go a long way to shaping the outcome at the Olympiastadion.

This is when the Three Lions’ resilience will be their friend. Where their performances in Germany have been lacking, their survival instincts have been out of the jungle’s very top drawer.

They have also grown into this tournament, slowly yes, but they have grown. Match by match they have improved and in the semi-final seemed to have loosened the chains that had been weighing them down.

Southgate admitted that in the early stages, his squad was partially paralysed by the fear of "public embarrassment."

That started to change following the lifeline presented by Jude Bellingham’s overhead acrobatics against Slovakia. Then, there were five faultless penalties.

And then there was Ollie Watkins. Geoffrey Chaucer could well have been describing England’s habit of conjuring up last-minute drama when he wrote in the Yeoman’s Tale: “For better than never is late; never to succeed would be too long a period.”

"Never" is an abstract concept that is troubling when attached to a major nation’s footballing success.

The last time England’s men won a major trophy, those who could watch it did so in grainy black and white on a television the size of a microwave.

If you are under 65, you would probably be too young to remember that Wembley afternoon, many millions who did celebrate Sir Geoff Hurst’s hat-trick are no longer with us.

That’s how significant victory would be, and the players know it, especially those who were part of the team that lost in the last Euro’s final to Italy three years ago.

While in public, they trot out the essential "just another game" mantra, in private, Declan Rice admits the conversations are very different: ‘I can tell you now this group of players are so hungry and we talk about it as a group. And we might not say it to a lot of people, but we say it to each other, just how much we want it and what it would mean. One more to go, we're ready."

They want it. A nation wants it. And Southgate probably deserves it.

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