On the night of England’s defeat to Italy in the Euro 2020 final, very drunk and rather morose, I had an argument with my father over WhatsApp. My immediate reaction to defeat was a sort of defiant pride that we’d got so close, shown the best of us. This certainly wasn’t true of everyone. It seemed as soon as Donnarumma saved Saka’s penalty, the Southgate Out campaign began in earnest. My father and I argued about Jack Grealish. England will never win anything with Southgate in charge, said my dad, a Manchester United fan who regularly called for Alex Ferguson to be sacked during the mid-to-late 1990s. Perhaps he won’t, I replied, but he’s come closer to doing so than any England manager in my lifetime. And there’s the rub.
Southgate is the most successful England manager since Alf Ramsey. It is just a fact that he has done better than any of Ramsey’s other successors. He led England to our first final since 1966, and back-to-back semi-finals to boot.
Since our win over West Germany at Wembley in 1966, England have won eleven knock-out ties at major tournaments in fifty-five years. Bobby Robson managed three, Sven secured two, and Terry Venables saw us past Spain. Glenn Hoddle, Kevin Keegan, Roy Hodgson, Fabio Capello, Graham Taylor - none of them won any knock-out games at major tournaments. Gareth Southgate is already responsible for five.
Our win over Colombia at the World Cup in 2018 was our first knock-out triumph for over a decade, since we beat Ecuador in 2006. Between 1966 and 1986, we didn’t win a single knock-out tie. Horrible as it is to remember, as recently as 2016 we were getting eliminated from the Euros by Iceland. In 2014, we finished bottom of our group and went home after three games.
This level of performance, to reach a semi-final and then a final in consecutive tournaments, is really unusual for England. It should not be seen as the norm, or the bare minimum. English ghosts have been laid to rest; we have won a penalty shoot-out, navigated a semi-final, beaten Germany in a knock-out game. England, under Southgate, have done well.
What has also been refreshing in recent years is the attitude of the squad. It is the first time I can remember the players being so genuinely enthusiastic about turning out for England. Southgate has worked hard to create a really strong culture with the national side, one which contrasts favourably with the fractious and divided squads under Sven-Goran Eriksson, or the “prison camp” atmosphere fostered by Fabio Capello. For a long time, playing for England was clearly a difficult experience, with Wembley often proving a hostile place and away grounds offering little respite; Wayne Rooney hitting back at booing England fans after a turgid draw against Algeria in 2010 sticks in the memory, as do incidents in Andorra and Malta, the latter during Southgate’s reign. By contrast, for the past few years, fans and players have all seemed to enjoy the whole experience. The England camp has been a happy one.
Southgate has also interpreted the role of England manager to not just pick the team but to be a leader, to set the culture and forge a collective identity. Players were encouraged to share their stories of what it meant to them to play for England, the struggles they had overcome, and the communities they felt they were representing. It was impressed onto the players how special it is to play for England, and how they are part of the wider story of the national team, stretching back for 150 years. Southgate penned articles to supporters, expressing what being English means to him, and carving out a liberal patriotic Englishness which has so often been absent in the national conversation.
Are there things to criticise? Of course. Southgate has still not managed to resolve that age-old English tendency which reared its head against Croatia in 2018 and Italy last summer; in the biggest games, England continue to cede position, the midfield continues to drop further and further back, and nobody can keep their foot on the ball for any length of time. The opposition control the game, the pressure is unrelenting, eventually the dam breaks.
Southgate’s England do play with the handbrake on more often than not. There is a sense that more could be made of the attacking talents at our disposal, which is a long-held English complaint; as Michael Owen says of his time in the side, “the media and crowds had this ‘bulldog’ identity. They wanted to see the players chasing everything, being physical, playing at 100mph and showing passion. But that wasn’t the way successful international teams played.” Southgate knows full well that the fans want more attacking verve, and gave in to that urge last year in a disappointing 1-1 draw with Hungary. He will likely resist the calls for more flair in Qatar, recently saying the balance of the team has to be right, and the time to work with the national team is short. A lot of angst about Southgate has stemmed from the way the side play, the double-bolted midfield, from people who’d rather we lose 3-2 than win 1-0. I remember Euro 2000, and I know which I prefer.
The recent performances in the Nations League were well below par, and though we can find reasons (a tired group of players at the end of a long season, playing in a competition that nobody really cares out), England losing 4-0 at home will never be accepted by supporters. The Southgate Out movement, ecstatic at finally being given a proper opportunity to stick the boot in, have spent the week gleefully doing so. Maybe this is just what we do in England; our leaders may have brief honeymoon periods, but generally we howl at them until they’re gone, then rehabilitate them in their retirement whilst we’re howling at someone else. Bobby Robson was revered in his later years; he was attacked by the media relentlessly in the 1980s. It’s not hard to imagine Gareth Southgate being feted in years to come, under the banner of “still the last person to steer England to a semi-final”.
Yet there is a sense of fin de siècle around the Southgate project now, a feeling that things may just be running their course. These things have momentum, and it is a worry that we might be sliding back to the days when Wembley was a toxic, unforgiving place for England, playing for the national side was an unpleasant chore, and managers are just there to be hounded.
Personally, I think some level of regression is likely in Qatar, a quarter-final exit, perhaps. Conditions will be hot and humid, an environment in which England teams have wilted with regularity. Southgate may fall on his sword. All managerial reigns reach a point where nothing more can be done, the players need new leadership and the manager has run out of things to say. But I would also bet that Southgate’s replacement will take us backwards.
What Southgate has already given us is a sense of belief and excitement about England that we hadn’t had in years and years. We’ll always have those two magical summers, where it seemed, just for a fleeting moment, that a genuinely likeable England team might win a trophy. It isn’t usually like this, not for England. There’s no manager out there we could appoint who would guarantee a tournament win. There isn’t a cheat code for success. Southgate has a semi-final and a final, things we shouldn’t take for granted. His critics have their fevered imaginations. We’ll miss him when he’s gone.
I can't help seeing opposition to Southgate as largely a right-coded culture war thing rather than an honest appraisal of his performance.