England v France: Roy Hodgson hopes team's native strengths will be enough to fillet talent-laden France Blanc scored a couple of points off Hodgson at the final media briefings, chiefly in relation to styles of play. "I hope the side that plays more football will win the game, but it's not always the case that that happens in football," said the coach of Les Bleus, 46, who replaced Raymond Domenech after the World Cup fiasco. But in everyone's head here are Chelsea's Champions League victories over Barcelona and Bayern and Denmark's win against the Dutch in Kharkiv. Enforced English caution, a sign of weakness, could yet recast itself as strength. And Blanc knows it. "I played in England for two years means and I know the English players" mentality," he said. I know what to expect in terms of spirit and strength in the tackles. They'll be like that tomorrow, maybe even more so. France have won only eight of the 28 meetings since the first cross-channel crunch, in Paris in 1923, but have run up a sequence of four wins and a draw since 1997. England have not beaten them in four European Championship fixtures. At Euro 2004 Sven-Goran Eriksson's team were 1-0 up but conceded twice in added time to Zinedine Zidane. Overseas clubs employ 11 of Blanc's squad while none of England's 23 work abroad. At the tip of the blade, Karim Benzema scored 21 times in 34 appearances for Real Madrid this season. Danny Welbeck and Andy Carroll, England's two senior strikers until Wayne Rooney returns, have two international goals between them. Nine of the French squad have current or past experience of the Premier League; and in their last meeting, in November 2010, Blanc's men administered a lecture in ball retention to an England side that included Ben Foster, Rio Ferdinand, Kieran Gibbs and Jordan Henderson. Yet the native strengths of the English game survive at a time when defensive strategies are no longer heresy. Esprit de corps and negation have regained respectability on football's tactical spectrum. Besides, England will probably start in Donetsk with two recent Premier League winners, Joe Hart and James Milner, and two Champions league victors in John Terry and Ashley Cole. Teased by a French journalist about England's comic history of flops, Hodgson replied with measured indignation: "We started professional football in the 1860s or 1870s. You can't accuse us of not being a very serious footballing nation. We're all very much aware that we've not won anything since 1966. You didn't need to remind me of that. We have a chance, as one of the 16 teams here, to show how good a team we are. I can assure you we'll be doing our best to prove it on the field of play. Before his first competitive game as England manager, in a career spanning eight countries, Hodgson also said: "We have a team full of players who are major stars in their own teams, one of the top leagues in Europe. I see them playing to the best of their ability at home. My hope is that they reproduce that form as a team in this tournament. Since the chaos of Fabio Capello's resignation there has been little peace for England. The Terry racism allegation and the shadow cast by Ferdinand's continued omission (even after Gary Cahill fractured his jaw) have placed the Hodgson regime in a parlous position. Failure to emerge from the group would not affect his own position but would deepen the anxiety about England's failure to produce talent to compare with that of France, who can whistle up Yohan Cabaye and Hatem Ben Arfa from Newcastle United. When St George's Park opens in August - in the Football Association's 149th year - the gulf might begin to narrow. But there is no long-term: only the heat and the surrounding slag heaps, where no one wants to end up.