England seek date with exhilaration and glory - but Gareth Southgate knows that there will be no middle ground between exhilaration and deep sorrow in Euro 2024 final

At about 3pm on Saturday afternoon, England's footballers packed up their belongings at their training base in Blankenhain and made the 150-mile trip north and east to Berlin. It may yet turn out to be the most significant journey of their young lives.

For Gareth Southgate and his team, possibility and opportunity wait side by side at the gates of the Olympiastadion on Sunday night. It's all a sportsperson can ever ask for. A shot at glory, a chance to make a mark on history.

The famous old stadium looked beautiful in the mid-afternoon sunshine on Saturday. Inside, the acres of green contrasted with the blue coverings on the running track like vivid watercolours on canvas.

Handfuls of English supporters had made the half-hour Metro journey out there just to have a look at it. Those will doubtless be the ones without tickets for Sunday night. They are heading to east Germany in their thousands from England if not to be part of this day and this evening then at least to be in the vicinity when their team begin their tilt at immortality. And that is exactly how this feels. From the inside and indeed from the outside. Southgate has already explained in unusually descriptive language how much he wants his team to beat Spain in the final of Euro 2024 on Sunday night. He wasn't even born the one and only previous time England won a summer tournament, in 1966.

His players are a decorated bunch. There are Champions League holders and Treble winners in the England ranks. But when it's England it hits differently and Southgate's squad made their final tournament journey on Saturday knowing that there will be no middle ground between exhilaration and deep sorrow on Sunday night.

Defender Luke Shaw is one of six players who began the Euro 2020 final that was lost to Italy on penalties at Wembley. The Manchester United defender even scored his country's goal in a 1-1 draw.

'That was the most hurt I have ever been in football and it was very hard to take,' Shaw said on Saturday. 'Maybe even more so because I had scored. It was really tough but I like to think we learned a lot from that night.'

Shaw is one of only three Englishmen to score in a major final. Sir Geoff Hurst and the late Martin Peters were the scorers in the 1966 World Cup win over West Germany.

That says everything for the scale of Sunday night's challenge in terms of the landscape of our game. Another statistic that points to the quality of the opposition is the one that reveals no Spanish domestic or international team have lost any of the last 26 finals in which they have featured.

This version of Spain is not a match for the one that hit that beautiful hot streak a decade-and-a-half ago, sandwiching a 2010 World Cup triumph in between European Championship successes in 2008 and 2012.

Nevertheless, Luis de la Fuente's team have been the star attraction of this tournament. While England have struck a dogged note — mixing sheer will and cussedness with the odd moment of individual brilliance — Spain have won every game, including what could easily have passed for two finals against Germany and France in the quarters and semis.

The two wingers — Nico Williams and Saturday's 17-year-old birthday boy Lamine Yamal — have been the star attractions but it is likely to be in the middle of the field where this final is actually won and lost. Spain thrive on possession in a way England have rarely managed here, with the midfield pairing of Manchester City's Rodri and Fabian Ruiz of PSG central to that. It will in all likelihood be a very big night here for Declan Rice and young Kobbie Mainoo.

'I think Spain's wingers have been unbelievable here,' acknowledged Shaw. 'Massive credit to them. But also I don't think we can focus too much on them — their whole team have been amazing.

'We understand their threats and where their dangerous players are. Maybe they are built on the belief of knowing they have won a lot over the past years. You know what you get from them. Extremely good in possession, very well drilled, quality players all around the pitch.

'So we know it's going to be tough. For us we just have to leave everything on the pitch, give everything. That's all we can do.

'For us it's a final and a chance to make history and we have to give it everything we have got.'

Southgate's players are unlikely to be found wanting for effort. That's one English trait that has endured. Whether they can find a 90-minute performance of consistent quality is another question entirely.

Strange as it sounds for a team readying for a final, England have played well only twice in six games in Euro 2024. For the first half an hour against Serbia in the first game of Group C and for the 35 minutes between the Netherlands scoring in Dortmund last Wednesday and the half-time whistle being blown.

None of that will be anywhere enough under the gaze of the Olympiastadion's bell tower this evening. Spain's levels have rarely dropped from the moment they started their own adventure by taking a 3-0 half-time lead against Croatia back on the opening Saturday of the tournament.

Comparing Spain's progress to the final — they also beat Italy in the group stage — with England's is enough to make the uninformed presume the two teams have been playing in different events. At times that is how it has felt, so lop-sided were the two halves of the draw.

But the beauty of this is that none of it matters now. Nobody remembers what happened on the way to a summit, only the name of the ones who got there first. England have an opportunity to plant their flag right through the heart of planet Europe on Sunday night.

I, for one, have a sneaking feeling they will do it. England to triumph 1-0.