Mark Dolan gives an insight into how the dugout is feeling ahead of the European Championships

The European Championship kicks off in a matter of days and the England Men’s national team will travel to France as the number one seed team for the competition.

The preparation from the team, building up to the tournament, has been nothing short of exceptional, with plenty of successful training camps along the way combined with a strong number of friendlies.

Assistant head coach, Mark Dolan said how he and the rest of the travelling squad are feeling: “We are feeling good, there’s consistently been positives and progression from every camp even when the lads have had to take on a lot of information,

“The players have been fantastic away from camps, being disciplined with their sessions each week and I’m feeling very confident that we can go and give the best account of ourselves and put on a show,” he said.

The squad that will be travelling to France is largely similar to the group that won the Nations League last summer and despite the young average age of the group, it’s a team with large amounts of experience.

On top of the playing experience, the side is littered with leaders all over the pitch and the culture of the team is one of a tightknit family.

Dolo (Mark’s nickname) highlighted just how impressed he has been with this group of players.

The group stood as one (image taken by: @threelinesphotography)

He said, “We are really happy with the squad, we feel the lads have bought into our ideas, especially from Scott [Rogers] taking over the national team full of young players,

“At the beginning there was quite a few players who weren’t as experienced as others, so to speak, but going into the Euros, almost everyone has had a taste of high-level international football and of course seen what it’s like to achieve something but also narrowly miss out.

“All the players have been in and around the England set-up for quite some time now and the togetherness and commitment from the squad puts us in a great position.”

The team’s preparation away from the tournament has concluded, a strong emphasis on the plan to keep improving camp by camp has put this set of players in great stead to go and achieve something in France.

Dolan is full of confidence and expressed his gratitude to the players for how they’ve approached the tournament and even said ‘we feel we can we go and win it’.

“We’ve played against a couple of the best teams in the world in the lead up to this tournament and shown we can match up against them,

“Everyone’s learned a lot in the approach to the Euros, and have trusted the process which has allowed us to progress to the strong position we are in now.

“The lads have taken a lot on board over a long period of time and we feel we can go and show what we can do and win it.”

The hard work is done and the lads should be proud of themselves for how they have applied themselves despite periods of a lot of outside noise.

The European Championships in Evian, France kicks off on June 1st and you can be apart of the lads’ journey by keeping up to date and interacting with our social media channels.