YOU don’t need the ghost of Freud to figure out that the England team have issues upstairs. Perhaps more than any other European nation that considers itself big (or at least big-ish), England seem to have raging self-esteem problems.

Multiple former internationals have talked about how much greater the pressure was in a Three Lions shirt, how stifling the atmosphere, how great the fear of failure. And manager after manager has come out and discussed the need to build, and maintain, confidence.

When he was in charge of the national team, Steve McClaren even hired a guy who was part psychol-ogist, part motivator, part footballer-whisperer to resolve this. (You may recall how it ended – with a home defeat to Croatia that left them watching Euro 2008 on television.)

It’s odd, when you think about it. These footballers play for some of the best sides in the world. You don’t hear of club managers having to perform motivational rituals on them week after week. And yet they seem to do just fine.

Some might blame the media and, sure the boom-and-bust knee-jerk cycle of empty bluster followed by hair-pulling despair is as juvenile as it is unhelpful. But you would expect folks who have been in the goldfish bowl since their teenage years to develop some sort of insulation against the media.

Others point out that, at club level, they have the safety blanket of more seasoned and competent foreign team-mates. Again, that might be true for many, but certainly not all; it’s not as if there’s less pressure on Harry Kane or Dele Alli at Tottenham because Christian Eriksen and Erik Lamela are hanging about.

Whatever the case, we’re seeing it again. Sure, it’s disappointing to drop two points to Russia on a looping injury-time header. But that doesn’t mean ignoring the 70 or so minutes in which England clearly imposed themselves on a veteran side who had parked the bus.

Equally, the come-from-behind win over Wales shouldn’t be treated as some kind of bellwether for the grit and mental strength of this side. So they went a goal down to Wales because Joe Hart made an atrocious blunder. Then Roy Hodgson threw on two strikers – Jamie Vardy and Daniel Sturridge – for a striker and a winger – Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling – and England equalised. Then came the third substitution – yet another striker, Marcus Rashford, for an attacking midfielder, Adam Lallana. And then Sturridge scored the winner and suddenly it became a massive psychological confidence boost for an entire nation.

You buying this? Nope, me neither.

There is no rational reason to go from doom-and-gloom to cock-of-the-block based on scoring a late, late goal. Sure, it makes it far more likely that England will advance to the Round of 16, which is good. But it’s an individual incident which has no bearing on the performance – good or bad – of the previous 90 minutes.

As long as the England team continues to assess their self-worth by their most recent results, the path will continue to be decidedly uphill.

WE went into Euro 2016 thinking the greatest threat was terrorism of the rad-ical Islamic variety. Instead, we’ve had floods, general strikes and hooliganism, both sloppy and drunken (from some English fans) and stone-cold sober and premeditated (from Russians).

And now it is flares. A whole arsenal of pyrotechnic devices was dumped on the pitch from the Croatian supporters’ section during that country’s 2-2 draw with the Czech Republic on Friday night.

The fact that it happened with the Croats 2-1 up and minutes to go might have puzzled some. But this wasn’t a display of anger at the team’s performance. This was, by all accounts, a case of some Croatian supporters intentionally trying to get their team – and by extension, their FA – in trouble.

This was but the last instalment in a long feud pitting some fans of Dinamo Zagreb and Hajduk Split against Croatian FA president Davor Suker (the former Real Madrid striker) and Zdravko Mamic, vice-president of the Croatian FA, former Dinamo Zagreb director and an intermediary involved in a number of transfers involving high-profile footballers such as Dejan Lovren and Luka Modric. Mamic stands accused of embezzling transfer funds and evading taxes – he goes on trial in September – and Suker is seen as his steadfast supporter and enabler.

The feud goes back a long way and is at the heart of the misbehaviour of Croatian fans during a number of internationals: from the barrage of flares when they played away at the San Siro during a Euro 2016 qualifier last November to the swastika drawn on the pitch a year ago to the flare set off when they faced Turkey last week.

They have been pretty open about it on message boards and in internet chatrooms. They want to embarrass the Croatian FA by drawing attention to their cause and are willing to get the team thrown out of the Euros along the way. They feel this is the only way their voice can be heard.

The problem is now squarely on Uefa’s doorstep. Having charged the side yesterday, the authority is faced with a catch 22: throw Croatia out, and the fans who launched the flares get their way, but find some sort of fudged solution and you have set a dangerous precedent. For once, you have sympathy with the governing body of the European game.

NOBODY wants to scaremonger, but it’s not lost on anybody here in France. Flares, or similar pyrotechnic devices, have been smuggled into at least four games, in four different cities: Russia v England in Marseille, Croatia v Turkey in Paris, Russia v Slovakia in Lille and now Croatia v CzechRepublic in Saint Etienne. It’s not lost on anyone that if you can smuggle a flare into a game you can probably smuggle something far more dangerous too.

The procedures put in place by Uefa, French law enforcement and the private security companies hired to search fans are clearly not working. It’s time to turn the screws further. Safety is not something to be taken for granted.