The 2-0 victory over Sweden on Saturday earned them a semi-final against Croatia on Wednesday night with France or Belgium lying in wait in the final.
It is now 52 years since Sir Alf Ramsey’s side became the last from England to lift the trophy and they remain an inspiration for the stars at this summer’s World Cup more than five decades later.
“I’ve met quite a few of those players and we know exactly how they’re held and perhaps in the modern era that would be even crazier, social media and everything else, the global thing is so much bigger,” said Southgate.
“We’ve talked about the team which won. How they’re still held and revered.
“At the beginning of working together with the lads and trying to sell them the vision of what’s possible, what we’re looking to achieve in the long-term.
“We also feel we’ve had events on when we’ve been in camp when some of those guys have been in, when the road was named at St George’s after Sir Alf.”
By contrast, the two semi-final defeats for England in major tournaments, Italia 90 and Euro 96 – when Southgate missed the decisive shoot-out penalty – have hardly been mentioned.
Gary Lineker, who was part of that first tournament, allowed his emotions to spill over on television following footage of an interview with the late Sir Bobby Robson about that semi-final failure and England captain Harry Kane wants to channel that feeling among former players as the team look to write a happier ending this time around.
“I’m proud to make ex-players proud,” said Kane. “I’m sure it its bringing back memories for them and for Gary when he was in the semi-final.
“But look, we said we wanted to write our own history. Hopefully we can go one step further and get to the final.”
Croatia manager Zlatko Dalic says his team do not fear Kane because they have already stopped Lionel Messi and Christian Eriksen.
England’s semi-final opponents believe tournament top scorer Kane and his strike partner Raheem Sterling are the danger men.
But they cannot wait to get stuck into the Three Lions after already seeing off Messi’s Argentina in the group stage and Eriksen’s Denmark in the last 16 before they knocked out hosts Russia.
Dalic said: “Kane is the top scorer with six goals at the moment so he is not easy to stop but we have really good centre backs.
“Dejan Lovren knows him well from the Premier League and Domagoj Vida is playing really well. I have full confidence in all our centre backs.
“We managed to stop Eriksen and Messi, we will manage to do that with Harry Kane.”
