Serbia captain Dusan Tadic has said England are the favourites to win the European Championship ahead of their opening group-stage match on Sunday night.
Tadic, 35, also believes Gareth Southgate’s Three Lions are now a different prospect to the previous crop of England players when he played in the Premier League for Southampton between 2014 and 2018.
“I don’t think they have underestimated us,” Tadic said. “They are, for sure, the favourites (tomorrow night) and the favourites to win this tournament, but that doesn’t have to mean much.
“It is a totally different national team now to when I was playing in England. This is a new generation, but I think it is also very important the coaches you bring to the Premier League. For example, Guardiola, Arteta, they improved so many players and raised them really high.
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“I think a lot of players grow with these coaches and they are now one of the top players. This is one of the biggest reasons, plus their talent.
“Now, you have different profiles of player. Before, you would have a really good No 8, box to box with a good shot and passing, but now you have more No 10s and really creative players.”
Tadic also highlighted Jude Bellingham, who won La Liga and the Champions League with Real Madrid in his first season in Spain, as one of the “biggest talents”.
Bellingham, 20, scored 23 goals in 42 games for Real Madrid and has established himself as one of Southgate’s most important players going into Euro 2024.
Tadic, now of Fenerbahce, played for Southampton between 2014 and 2018 (Photo by Matt Watson/Southampton FC via Getty Images)
“He is a great player and one of the biggest talents,” Tadic said. “Definitely he will be one of the biggest threats to us, but we will do our best to avoid him and stop him as much as possible.”
“We have to be very careful, we have to close the space and not give him free time to control the ball and penetrate in the space in front of him,” added Dragan Stojjkovic, Serbia’s manager, when asked about Bellingham.
“Defensively, we need to be very careful and we have to show everything that we did during our training sessions to stop this kind of dangerous situation.
“But it is very impressive how he plays. He is very, very young and it is unbelievable how he plays. It is good for England and bad for us, but we will do our best to control these situations.”
Following Sunday night’s game against Serbia in Gelsenkirchen, England play Denmark before rounding off their Group C campaign against Slovenia.
(Photo by Frederic Scheidemann – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
