'It's his fault!': Wayne Rooney blames the man responsible for England's poor Euro 2024

England face Switzerland in the quarterfinals of Euro 2024, but have failed to impress so far.

In the group stage, the 'Three Lions' only managed to beat the Serbian team 0-1, in the end, bottom of Group C and did not go beyond a draw against Denmark (1-1) and Slovenia (0-0). Despite this, they somehow topped their group.

In the round of 16, they faced Slovakia, an affordable rival that had just qualified as third in the group of Romania and Belgium. However, the Slovaks put Gareth Southgate's men in serious trouble and only narrowly escaped elimination.

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Slovakia took the lead in the 24th minute and were seconds from getting through to the quarterfinals when Jude Bellingham managed to send the game to extra time with a superb overhead kick goal, in injury time in the 94th minute. Just 60 seconds into extra time, Harry Kane managed to put it all to bed, finishing the game 2-1.

Despite the win, it once again was a pretty lackluster display from a side the bookies had marked as favorites to win the title at the start of the event.

So who is to blame for this? Is it the players? Is it coach Gareth Southgate? These are fair calls, but for Wayne Rooney, the person behind England's poor Euros runs is someone not even involved with the tournament: Pep Guardiola.

The former Manchester United and Everton striker, current coach of Plymouth Argyle FC in the EFL Championship, is providing commentary analysis on the tournament for the BBC and explained that many teams are trying to play with the tactical systems employed by the Spanish super coach at club level... but with very little success.

"What we're seeing here... with England and Holland [The Netherlands] at times, we're seeing this system which everyone seems to be playing," the former England forward told the BBC.

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"The game is much more positional. Everyone tries to score the perfect goal. I think this is Pep's fault. He's brought that in. He's mastered it but everyone else seems to struggle to create clear-cut chances.," he added in a joking tone, blaming the Manchester City coach for the ills of his team.

It is curious that with one of the strongest squads in the tournament, which includes names like Jude Bellingham, Harry Kane, Phil Foden, Cole Palmer and Bukayo Saka, they have barely managed to score 4 goals – two of them in the last match.

In that sense, most of the criticism from experts and analysts has been directed at Gareth Southgate, who certainly has not been able to get the potential of the side on paper out on the pitch.

As Rooney suggests, by trying to play like Guardiola, it seems that rather than maximize his side's strike potential, Southgate is keeping the Three Lions on a tightened leash to play a more controlled game.

Criticism that has been expressed by other legends of English football, such as Gary Lineker, who described the English game as "s***"; or the great scorer Alan Shearer, who lamented that his team's game is simply "terrible," as reported by the Daily Mail.

Things are just going to get tougher for England as they come up against a red hot Switzerland – a very tough team that has just eliminated Italy with ease.  The Swiss will be far less forgiving than Slovakia, so the Three Lions will need to step up or start packing their bags.

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