Comment
HEAD HELD HIGH
How classy Gareth Southgate turned England from deluded group of individuals into heroes who love pulling on white shirt
Criticism during Euro 2024 will have hurt the England boss
GARETH SOUTHGATE won nothing but changed everything.
The decision for him to resign is the correct one but Southgate leaves a legacy which will hugely benefit his successor.
3
3
So how will he be viewed in history? It might be kinder in a few years’ time.
At the moment, there is still so much frustration at the way it all ended in Berlin.
Yet Southgate is second only to Sir Alf Ramsey in terms of overall success and no other manager gets close.
To get to two major finals — one on foreign soil for the first time — was a huge achievement.
read more football news
So was the overhaul of a dysfunctional football team which had just lost to Iceland at Euro 2016.
The players were so paranoid they even refused to tell us in France who was the best at playing table tennis.
That deluded group of individuals thought everyone was against them — and they weren’t.
Southgate changed all that with a far more grown-up approach.
Most read in Football
BEST FREE BET SIGN UP OFFERS FOR UK BOOKMAKERS
He encouraged the players to tell their own story, to express themselves, and he got rid of a siege mentality that did not need to exist.
Former manager Fabio Capello used to moan that the England team played with fear.
Lee Carsley for England
Next England manager odds
- Graham Potter - Evens
- Eddie Howe - 3/1
- Mauricio Pochettino - 4/1
- Lee Carsley - 10/1
- Frank Lampard - 10/1
- Jurgen Klopp - 10/1
- Pep Guardiola - 16/1
Under Southgate, players loved pulling on that white shirt.
There were no more cliques, no more egos and no more pulling out of squads with dubious injuries which then cleared up by the next Prem game.
Southgate created a club atmosphere within the England team and now you only have to look at the pictures each time the players greet each other at St George’s Park.
They are all mates, pulling together in the same direction, as it should be.
Southgate had a reputation for sticking with his favourites — even though Wayne Rooney, Joe Hart, Jack Wilshere, Chris Smalling and Dele Alli were all dumped by him.
Jack Grealish, James Maddison, Marcus Rashford, Jordan Henderson and Harry Maguire all missed out on the Euro 2024 squad.
Smiling-assassin Southgate was certainly not afraid to make a big decision.
In some cases, fans and pundits think the written media have been too soft on him.
The reason other managers were given a harder time was because England were bloody awful at major tournaments and were considered a joke around the globe — particularly at the 2014 World Cup after finishing bottom of their group.
It is also worth remembering that England failed to qualify for Euro 2008.
And the team included Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, David Beckham, John Terry, Rio Ferdinand, Ashley Cole and Gary Neville.
Southgate's gone - now it's time to go foreign
By Dave Kidd
There is a natural preference to appoint an English successor.
And in an ideal world, the England manager should always be English. But this is not an ideal scenario.
So the FA must be ambitious in sounding out the best man for the job, regardless of nationality.
Because England need a manager who would gain instant respect with players, who would be tactically bold enough to take on Spain and a strong enough character to deal with Jude Bellingham’s Real Madrid Galactico status, which threatens to cause future issues within the England squad. Yes, when the FA have gone foreign in the past, it hasn’t worked out well.
Yet the problem with Sven-Goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello was that neither had any previous involvement in English football.
They lacked knowledge and understanding of the football culture — indeed, Capello barely spoke the language.
Now there is a wealth of overseas managerial talent with significant Premier League experience, including Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, Mauricio Pochettino, Carlo Ancelotti and Thomas Tuchel.
Read more from Dave Kidd on who England should turn to.
Yet despite having to field international rookies Marc Guehi and Kobbie Mainoo due to injuries, Southgate was getting pelters after reaching the final.
Admittedly, Southgate did not get the best out of the team at Euro 2024.
In Germany, he selected an unbalanced squad, failed to make changes during games quickly enough and paid the price for starting Harry Kane, Bukayo Saka and Kieran Trippier when they were not 100 per cent fit.
But, even though Southgate came under fire from all quarters, he put on his tin hat and dragged England to the final.
Yet the criticism he received throughout Euro 2024 — and a lot of it was really nasty — clearly upset him.
It will have played a part in his decision to quit yesterday. He was clearly annoyed with the digs from all pundits, not just Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer.
He was also deeply upset to have beer thrown at him by fans.
After changing the culture and overall results over eight years with England, Southgate was stunned to have found so much hatred thrown in his direction by fans.
Southgate's England record
Games played: 102
Games won 61,
Games drawn 24,
Lost 17,
Scored 213,
And conceded 72 with a 59.8 per cent win ratio.
He felt he deserved better. And he was right.
As a patriotic Englishman, to be ridiculed on social media will have been absolutely gut-wrenching for him.
Regardless of the result on Sunday, I think Southgate would have left because of all the s**t he was getting.
There is no doubt that Southgate let some colossal, history-making opportunities slip through his fingers.
But football is all about fine margins.
Had Hart not delivered a 10/10 performance in a World Cup qualifier at Slovenia in October 2016, England would not have escaped with a goalless draw.
And Southgate would not have got the job full-time.
While leading Croatia 1-0 in the 2018 World Cup semi-final, England would surely have got to the final had Harry Kane squared the ball to Raheem Sterling.
At Euro 2020, in the final against Italy, there were the three penalty misses from England players.
Had Kane not missed his penalty in the 2022 World Cup quarter-final against France at 2-1 down, it may have been different.
Hugo Lloris said recently that England would have won easily in extra-time because the French were knackered.
And then this year, there were more fine margins, Jude Bellingham rescuing England with his 95th- minute equaliser against Slovakia, a win over Switzerland on penalties.
In the final, Spain’s winner was marginally onside and then England wasted chances right at the end.
3
This felt like our time... but keep Gareth's culture and we can win it in 2026 instead, writes Jack Wilshere
IT will take a while for me and every England fan to get over this, writes Jack Wilshere.
To come so close to winning that trophy, only to be beaten in a second Euros final in a row, is a huge disappointment.
Especially when it really felt like this was our time.
It seemed that everything was coming together for us to end the long wait for a major title.
But Spain deserved it. They were the better team in the final and the best team of the tournament.
We will all — supporters, players, coaches, the FA — have to move on and go again.
Because English football is still in a good position.
Gareth Southgate has taken us to two finals, a semi-final and a quarter-final in four tournaments. We have never produced a run like that before.
The challenge now is to maintain this level of competitiveness and make England even better.
Southgate and his staff have done a fantastic job in changing the whole environment and narrative around the national team.
Now Gareth is gone, the wider culture he has put in place must be preserved.
This tournament was the biggest test of that culture the team had to go through.
They overcame the problems and went all the way, only to fall at the final hurdle.
But there is every reason to believe we can challenge at the World Cup in 2026 and beyond.
We’ve got a really good group of players, many of them young, who can go on playing and performing for England for years.
Jude Bellingham, Kobbie Mainoo, Bukayo Saka, Phil Foden and Cole Palmer — to name just five — have plenty more tournaments in them.
This tournament will also be an inspiration for the next generations of players. Unfortunately there isn’t the trophy lift to take that to a completely different level.
But England have delivered moments in Germany that will be replayed forever.
The Bellingham overhead kick and Ollie Watkins’ semi-final winner will be recreated in playgrounds and cages up and down the country.
What I would like to see now is England continuing to develop, to become a team that can consistently dominate opponents and can give a real identity to English football.
We now have players who are comfortable on the ball and technically very good.
The biggest disappointment of the tournament was that we didn’t see that as often as we would have liked. That leaves us with a ‘what if?’ feeling.
England must not lose that old-school mentality of finding a way to win even when you’re not playing well — that never-say-die spirit which got us through this Euros more than once.
But the next step is to allow other qualities to shine through, to give the players that our system is creating the platform to show everything they can do.
The job for me and for other coaches is to keep producing players that are comfortable on the ball and understand how to perform under pressure at a high level.
English football is in a good place but we need to keep going. Then we will finally get over the line.
Real all of SunSport columnist Jack Wilshere's Euro 2024 columns...
Where Southgate ends up will be intriguing.
The 53-year-old feels he has done enough to get a big job but most fans at Premier League clubs will groan if he is appointed at theirs.
It needs someone with large cojones to make a huge decision.
If the season starts disastrously for Manchester United under Erik ten Hag, which it probably will, United could be looking for a manager in October.
The sporting director at United is Dan Ashworth, who knows Southgate well from their time together at the FA.
Although it would not be a popular decision, it would not be a surprise if Ashworth called his former colleague.
But for now, Southgate just needs a break.
He has been a class act and he leaves with his head held high.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
England just fell short with him in charge. There’s no denying that.
But let’s hope Southgate will still get the respect he deserves and is remembered as the man who did, indeed, change everything.
Maybe Kane really is cursed as trophy drought goes on... he may never get a better chance with England
IT now seems as though he really is cursed. Along with the rest of us, writes Charlie Wyett.
Tragically, unbelievably, Harry Kane’s agonising search for a trophy still continues and you know have to wonder whether he will ever actually manage it.
Certainly for England, in any case.
Kane has now suffered defeat in three major club finals and two finals of the European Championships.
Last night, the Three Lions captain was so ineffective that he was replaced by Ollie Watkins just after the hour.
Like much of this tournament, he really struggled to make the impact when England needed him, not that he had much service.
He had one shot in the first half and that was Rodri, who subsequently injured himself and went off at the break.
When Cole Palmer struck that brilliant equaliser, Kane was off on his feet from the bench, only for the national team to get another kick in the bo**ocks at the end.
Kane was substituted in both the games against Switzerland and Holland which England went on to win but on this occasion, he could only witness a gut-wrenching twist just when it looked as though Gareth Southgate’s team had dug their way out of trouble.
The Bayern Munich striker suffered the World Cup 2018 semi-final loss against Croatia, endured heartbreak against Italy in the Euro2020 final and then missed from the spot in the World Cup 2022 quarter-final against France.
He really thought that this was his time, even though England did not play well in Germany.
Kane will know that he will have more opportunities with England. But not many more.
The World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico seems a long way away and it will surely be under a new manager. Will England be better than they are now? Probably not.
And we are all left to wonder how much better England would have been with a fit and firing Kane at his very best.
Read the full verdict on the curse of Harry Kane...
Or check out all of Charlie Wyett's Euro 2024 stories...
Topics