No soft side of Euro 2024 draw, insists England's Marc Guehi

Marc Guehi has dismissed talk that England have a "favourable" European Championship draw as Gareth Southgate's side prepare to kick off the knockout phase against Slovakia.

The curtain came down on the group stage on Wednesday evening, when Georgia’s shock win against Portugal meant the Euro 2020 runners-up avoided the Netherlands in the last 16.

Instead of facing the side who are seventh in FIFA’s world rankings, England will take on 45th-placed Slovakia when they return to Gelsenkirchen this Sunday.

Furthermore, Spain, Germany, Portugal, France and Belgium are in the other half of the draw, adding further expectation to a group who were booed at the end of Tuesday’s 0-0 draw with Slovenia.

"I think everyone has seen in this competition that there is not a favourable side of the draw," centre-back Guehi said.

"Every team, every opponent, is really tough to come up against. I think we need to remain calm.

"We have put pressure on ourselves but we are calm and focused and we need to continue to focus on one thing at a time.

"I think what builds confidence is togetherness, performances, the fact that we haven’t lost a game yet, which is really important.

"All the other things you can’t really control. I think it’s important we just control what we can control and that’s remaining focused and dealing with whatever obstacles are put in front of us."

England have won all three of their last-16 matches under Southgate, with their last defeat at this stage of a major tournament coming eight years ago.

Everybody had expected Roy Hodgson’s men to beat Iceland at Euro 2016 and the 2-1 loss in Nice went down as one of the most embarrassing defeats in the national team’s history.

There is similar expectation ahead of facing Slovakia in