Eriksson has given an exclusive last-minute briefing to TheFA.com ahead of the biggest game England have played since meeting Brazil in the quarter-finals of the World Cup in 2002.

Not surprisingly after weeks of intensive preparation he is full of optimism - so here is the England's Head Coach's message to you in full:

So, at last, we are nearly there! The tournament is about to begin and we go into our first game with great confidence.

The players have enjoyed a fantastic preparation and are mentally strong for the challenge ahead.

The support we are receiving in Portugal and especially at home is out of this world, and we will be doing everything we can to achieve success for the fans.

I think we are ready It's a pity that John Terry's injured because we we all know what a season he did for Chelsea, but that's life in football. Hopefully he'll be okay for the second game.

It's a very difficult game against France but we are prepared and except for Terry we don't have any problems at all. The squad is fitter than it was two years ago, before the World Cup. So everything looks fine. Against France you never know, but we will try and I think we have a good chance.

It's the second major tournament for me, and this time it has been much better than it was two years ago. Much, much better. Two years ago we had problems with Beckham, with Dyer, we had Gary Neville out, Steven Gerrard out. The only problem we have now, since we played against Japan, is Terry. He's out for the first game, but then we are almost sure he will be ready for the second.

People are always asking me if we can win the tournament. Well, we are one of the candidates, but you have many. I have talked before about Italy, who are a very good team, but France is maybe the biggest favourite, if you look on paper. You have other teams as well - Portugal are playing at home, Germany are always a threat in the big tournaments, the Czech Republic are big outsiders, too. And Sweden, look out for them because they have a very good team. But I hope we are one of the teams that could win it and we will give it our best.

We could not have a more difficult first game and of course it will not all be easy. You're talking about top, top players in the world - Zidane and Henry. So of course they will create problems for us, you must expect that.

But we have to try to defend as good as possible against them. It's amazing the game we are going to play on Sunday. I should maybe ask my own players how to stop them because most of the players in the France team are team-mates with some of our players, so they know them very well! And even the opposite, of course. The France players know the England players very well.

We are very much looking forward to it. But it's very dangerous to think there are only two teams in the group, France and England. I have a lot of respect for Switzerland , I saw them a couple of months ago. And even Croatia, they are very good team as well.

We have to stay focused, but the confidence in the squad is very high. I don't need to tell them that we can beat France if we have a good day. I think they know that. If you take all the competitive games we played during the last two years, we did well almost every time. Maybe not the second half against Brazil, but in all the others we did very well.

If you're not motivated in a European Championship meeting France, you shouldn't be here. The motivation is looking at the opponents like, Henry, Zidane and Pires. I'm sure our players have a lot of respect, as I have, for France - but they're not afraid of going out there.

In fact, the atmosphere in the squad is very good, and it's been like that almost all the time we've gone into qualification games or big tournaments. For me it's very important, many times more important than to have the right tactics.

There is good news for us, too. David Beckham is fitter this time, and that's very important. He looks sharp. He's focused. I think he is thinking a lot about France these days. He had a session for himself on the pitch yesterday afternoon. He wanted to go down and shoot some free-kicks alone and that says a lot about him. He looks forward to this tournament, and will be very important for us, as always.

We need David Beckham fit and we need everyone on good form. In the World Cup we didn't do that bad, we did okay. We lost against the world champions. But England should be better now than we were in the World Cup, and we should be even better in two years time.

We're looking forward to this tournament and it's a good opportunity for us to show that we're a great football nation.

I hope we can do that and I hope you will be proud of us.

Sven

11 June 2004  
Sven Press Conference - AUDIO