Thierry Henry's Euro 2016 preview: England, France and Germany

Thierry Henry

Monday 23 May 2016 10:37, UK

France legend Thierry Henry knows what it takes to win a major tournament, having won the World Cup on home soil in 1998 and the European Championship two years later.

The French are hosting Euro 2016 this summer, and Henry believes his nation has a great chance of winning a tournament on their own turf again.

Here, Henry also discusses England's chances in France, as well as world champions Germany as he previews the tournament...

What would be a successful tournament for England?

People will talk about maybe going to the quarter-finals or semi-finals and I hope for England that they are going to win it, if France don't win it, obviously.

But for me a successful tournament is coming out of it as a team. I hope they go back home - on the Eurostar - as a team. That is the most important thing.

As a point of comparison, France went through the same thing. Didier Deschamps went to the World Cup and kind of said, 'We are going to go there to prepare for the Euros'. We all knew they were not going to win it, but they came out stronger as a team.

For me, success would be that; knowing finally that you have a strong team.

Who are England's key players?

I have to mention Harry Kane. You finally have a guy who can bail you out in some games. If you are defending you know he can always score at any moment.

I would also like to mention Wayne Rooney. Is he going to start? That is going to be Roy Hodgson's problem throughout the whole tournament because I'm sure the press and the fans are going to argue that throughout the whole tournament.

Rooney is going to be key, even though he is not playing. To be in and around the youngsters will be key. We saw with Tottenham recently, for example, that those youngsters can be mentally weak sometimes.

Rooney, who has the experience of playing in a lot of tournaments and being sent off against Portugal, is vital in that dressing room. How many guys have been in big tournaments before?

Is he going to start? I don't know. If you play Spain or Germany who are going to come onto you and have possession you need some speed to go on the counter then maybe he won't play, but you need to have him around.

Will the 100 per cent record in qualifying make a difference?

The qualifying campaign creates momentum. It's better to go into a tournament without having to talk about some defeats you had in the qualification rounds.

But all it did was qualify you to go to the Euros. That's basically it.

It will go down in history that you have not lost a game and won them all, but after that you need to perform at the Euros and that's a different story.

What are England's weaknesses?

Maybe at the back they are not as strong as they used to be. If I go back I remember the likes of Tony Adams, Gary Neville, Sol Campbell, John Terry and Rio Ferdinand. They were pretty strong at the back.

I don't know if it's a weakness, but people are not expecting much of that team so that weakness of maybe not having a great back four and people not expecting a lot can also be a good attribute to perform at the Euros.

People are not expecting them to win the tournament. This is one of the first times I'm over here and I don't hear, 'We are going to win it'. That might be a good thing at the end of the day.

What are you expecting from France?

This is the big one for us. This is the big one for Deschamps and the big one for the team.

We all know it is not easy to win a tournament at home, but we have done it twice. We have won the Euros in 1984 and the World Cup in 1998 so we have a history of usually winning it when we have the tournament at home.

France has a good team. The only thing I will say is we haven't played an official game for a long time, so that might be the question mark about the team at the moment.

I think we have a great team and I'm not saying that because I am French, but I do think they have one of the best teams in Europe out there.

I'll tip them to win and I hope they will.

How have preparations gone for them?

Deschamps said he was going to prepare for the Euros at the World Cup. If they could have gone and won it then it would have been amazing but we all knew that we were short and were not going to win it.

The preparation for the Euros was the World Cup. You are always going to have some guys that you didn't think about at the beginning; I'm talking about N'Golo Kante. No one knew he was going to make the squad and now he is in it.

There are always one or two guys that were not in the frame that will end up playing for France at the Euros.

Who are you most looking forward to watching in the France squad?

Anthony Martial has been a "revelation" this season. He had a good season with Monaco the year before, but people were questioning whether he was going to be good or not at Manchester United. He has showed everyone he can be that guy.

There is a guy I want to see even more performing at the Euros and that's Antoine Griezmann. I want to see what type of Euros he is going to have.

People might pick Paul Pogba or other players, but that's the guy I want to see.

Finally, what are you expecting from world champions Germany?

Unfortunately for Germany, when you raise the bar so high people are going to expect them to win.

I wouldn't say anything other than a win would be failure but people are expecting them to win. They are the world champions and they usually go to the semi-finals or finals.

I would say there is one thing missing in that puzzle; a great striker. They always used to have a great striker, but they have had to recall Mario Gomez to the national team and that tells you a lot.

I saw a lot of their games in the qualification round and they had a lot of possession and crosses but they couldn't score goals, at times. They were very exposed on the counter after that.

I think they are missing a big striker. Hopefully Gomez can be that guy or maybe someone else.