Gary Neville is the only ITV pundit travelling to Qatar for the World Cup who believes that England have what it takes to win the tournament.
England kick off their tournament against Iran on November 21 before two more Group B fixtures against the USA and Wales. Manager Gareth Southgate announced his 26-man squad on Thursday, with James Maddison, Conor Gallagher and Callum Wilson the standout selections.
Southgate and his players will bid to overturn 56 years of hurt in Qatar after finishing as runners-up to Italy at Euro 2020 last year. England come into the tournament in poor form, having been relegated from their Nations League group after failing to win any of their past six matches.
If they can make it out of their group, they will come up against sides like Brazil, Germany, Argentina and France for the trophy. Neville is confident that recent defeats by Italy and Hungary and draws with Germany are not representative of Southgate’s side.
“I’m going to go for England! They’ve gone from semi-final, final, runner-up and now they are going to go one more,” Neville said.
“I think they are on a growth over the last few years and I don’t buy into this idea that the Nation League’s performance is them – they played four games in the middle of summer that actually nobody was stimulated by and I think the two games they played recently against Italy and Germany are tough games that you can lose in any single year.
“So, come the tournament, hopefully injuries won’t take too much of a hold and I’m going to go for England. If not England I’m going to go for France or Argentina.”
Fellow ITV pundit Ian Wright is less confident and predicts England will be struggling to reach another final. Instead, he is backing Argentina to come good in Lionel Messi ’s swansong.
“Argentina – just coming off the back of winning the Copa America last year, it’s a fantastic squad and it might be the last World Cup for Messi,” Wright said.
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“They can play beautiful attacking football but they also know how to really grind out results when needed. England have shown they can get to the latter stages of big tournaments – we have good tournament experience now and we’d do well to get to the semi-final stages again.”
Roy Keane likes the look of Brazil, who have a wealth of attacking talent, with Neymar, Vinicius Junior, Gabriel Jesus, Gabriel Martinelli and Raphinha among their array of options.
“It’s going to be hard to stop Brazil,” Keane said. “Brazil have such great strength in depth at the moment and some real quality players across the squad. I think France also have some brilliant players and England will come up just short.”
ITV pundit World Cup predictions
Gary Neville – England
Ian Wright – Argentina
Roy Keane – Brazil
Ally McCoist – Brazil
Lee Dixon – Brazil
John Hartson – Brazil
Nigel De Jong – Netherlands
Andros Townsend – France
