Jermaine Jenas: England’s fearless young players can drive us to success

Video: Jenas says the tournament build-up has a more positive feel for England

The wait is over – Euro 2016 is here and England head across the channel as full of hope as ever thanks to a youthful squad.

Group stage games against Russia, Wales and Slovakia stand between Roy Hodgson’s side and a place in the knock-out stages.

Russia are first up on Saturday in Marseille, with hosts France the current bookies’ favourites, followed closely by world Champions Germany.

Former Forest midfielder and Nottingham lad Jermaine Jenas has been looking ahead to England’s chances of springing a surprise.

Before having to retire from football through injury, Jenas amassed 21 caps for the full England side and most notably scored the first goal of Fabio Capello’s reign in charge of the national team.

Jenas is not short of international experience, but many of this young England squad are.

The likes of Dele Alli, Eric Dier and Harry Kane look certain to start in France despite only having 24 caps between them.

No-one expects us to win for once

Jenas said: “The optimism comes because no one expects us to win for once.

“Usually everyone is like ‘we have to win it, we’ve got the best players’ but we never do. It’s great that we’ve got a young bunch of players.

“Young players are fearless, they’ve got no respect for anybody that they come up against. It’s quite refreshing to see that, but we’ve also got a number of players who have had unbelievable seasons within our ranks.”

The 33-year-old will be covering the tournament live in France with the Match of the Day team, and he went to one tournament during his playing days; the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

He said: “It will be great for me and in terms of being able to give people the experience because I will have lived both sides of it having been inside the changing rooms from the 2006 World Cup.

“Knowing and understanding the pressures of being at a major tournament and how it feels to be there, to be able to broadcast and talk about it and give all the fans the experience is going to be brilliant.”

England’s Euro 2016 campaign gets underway on Saturday (8pm kick off)