LET’S GET QUIZZICAL

Test your pub pals with this tough Euro winners thinker

IF YOU pub bet this summer, try this question on your friends: Which eight English clubs have had Euros winners on their books?

Gareth Southgate will take his squad to Germany in six weeks’ time looking to become the first England team to lift the European Championship trophy.

In doing so they would finally join the club and lay to rest the jinx that seems to have haunted the only major European force not to have its name on the silverware.

Perennial powerhouses Germany (3), Italy (3), Spain (2) and France (2) all have multiple titles and will fancy their chances of going the distance again.

And you can add to the list one-time triumphs for Russia, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Denmark, Greece and Portugal, with England looking on enviously wondering when it will be their turn.

But when it comes to players who were playing IN England at the time they were crowned European champion, the honour roll is lengthy.

Chelsea lead the way. In fact, Stamford Bridge has been the home of most players to have won the Euros in a country whose national team has not won it.

Books

Fernando Torres and Juan Mata (Spain 2012), Jorginho and Emerson (Italy 2020) and Didier Deschamps, Marcel Desailly and Frank Leboeuf (France 2000) are their magnificent seven.

Liverpool are next, having had five players on their books when they lifted the trophy.

Torres was at Anfield when Spain won in 2008 — along with Xabi Alonso, Alvaro Arbeloa and Pepe Reina — while goalkeeper Reina has a second entry as a Liverpool player in the 2012 victorious Spain squad.

The French foreign legion of 2000 gave Arsenal a healthy representation with Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry and Emmanuel Petit, while Cesc Fabregas gave them a fourth with Spain in 2008.

Okay, those three were easy enough, and you would make a reasonable guess if you plonked for the two Manchester clubs. Seems a gimme, doesn’t it?

Well, yes, they are on the list, but only just.

United have never had an outfield player on their books at the time he won the Euros, being represented only twice and both times by keepers, with Peter Schmeichel winning with Denmark’s shock victors in 1992 and Fabien Barthez repeating the feat for France in 2000.

City, meanwhile, have just one name on the list, when David Silva was victorious with Spain in 2012 (he was a Valencia player in 2008).

Class

If you can name the three other clubs on this list, you are going to the top of the football class.

Let’s start with Southampton, whose fans cheered on two of their players in the 2016 final as Portugal beat France, with both Cedric Soares and Jose Fonte in the starting line-up.

Then, take a bow Leicester, whose defender Nikos Dabizas was part of the Greece squad that stunned Portugal in the 2004 final.

And the final place goes to Bolton, from the same Greek fairytale, where midfielder Stelios Giannakopoulos lifted the trophy.