England's national soccer coach Roy Hodgson (Photo: Reuters)
France head into the Group D game in Donetsk on the back of a 21-game unbeaten streak, brimming with confidence and attacking brio after a 4-0 drubbing of Estonia last week.
The French outplayed England when the sides last met at Wembley in a November 2010 friendly, and Laurent Blanc's team will start as favourites for Monday's showdown in the Donbass Arena.
However Hodgson is adamant that despite England's chaotic and injury-hit build-up to the tournament, his players believed they were capable of beating the former World and European champions.
"The players think they can win, no question," Hodgson said. "There's no fear in that respect. There's healthy respect as they deserve to have.
"We know France's players -- many of them play in England -- we know the quality of those players. Our players have come across them week in, week out.
"And we must respect the fact that when you go 21 matches unbeaten you've got a pretty good team there. If you went 21 matches unbeaten in a league that's quite an achievement.
"But I don't get the feeling that our players are in any way cowed by the task ahead of them. Maybe they are more motivated in a way.
"It might be quite nice for them in a way to go into a game where people are saying 'You've got a tough game today, France are a better team than you'. It doesn't happen very often."
England have registered back-to-back clean sheets in Hodgson's opening games in charge and the manager believes his team will need another steely defensive display to keep France's attacking triumvirate of Samir Nasri, Karim Benzema and Franck Ribery at bay.
"The higher the quality team you play in terms of their attacking threat, the better you have to be defensively," he said.
"But you know that sometimes against those teams that if you can be good defensively they are also going to leave openings on the counter-attack."
Hodgson revealed his coaching staff and players had spent the week poring over videos of their opponents in a hunt for potential weaknesses.
"I think we've had three or four videos about France that we've been able to show the players," he said.
"We're not concerned that we don't know what we're going into; we're concerned that we know we're going to face a team with some good players who are capable of causing us damage."
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