Declan Rice on Euro 2024 final: ‘We will run through brick walls to win’
England midfielder is parking talk of celebratory haircuts or tattoos as he prepares to confront Spain in Berlin
The question was put to Declan Rice: what memento would he choose for winning Euro 2024? Perhaps, like some of his teammates, he could get on board with the idea of a celebratory tattoo. Maybe a radical deployment of hair dye could bring something snazzier and less permanent. Instead Rice reached straight for the deadpan. “I don’t want to jinx anything because I feel like we’ve done that in the World Cup and the last Euros,” he said. “When things don’t go your way you end up thinking: ‘Why did we speak about things before they even happen?’ One more game, then we can talk about silly haircuts and tattoos.”
Rice did not want to appear a killjoy or, as he put it, “be robotic”. England have been burned before. They are so close now and it owes plenty to the drive and relentless focus of a player who sets the tempo in Gareth Southgate’s engine room. “With me, what you see is what you get,” he said. There is certainly no danger of him hiding. He carries himself like a captain and speaks with the authority of someone who has watched, listened, studied and thought.
