World Cup 2018: How England boss Gareth Southgate was inspired with manners and impeccable tailoring style of Ray Wilkins
Three Lions boss is lifting the nation with his tactics, manners and waist coat - having never forgotten the huge impression made on him at Crystal Palace by an England legend
HE is the not the first English football man to have been blessed with impeccable manners and immaculate tailoring. Not quite.
And before this night of nights, when he will lead England into a World Cup semi-final against Croatia here in Moscow, Gareth Southgate is likely to remember another man cut from the same cloth.
At the tender age of 23, Southgate was appointed a Premier League captain with newly promoted Crystal Palace back in 1994.
And on a pre-season tour to Portugal that summer, the fresh-faced defender who’d barely started shaving was asked by his manager, Alan Smith, to share a room with a Palace new boy.
Ray Wilkins had played 84 times for England, skippered Chelsea as a teenager, bossed the midfield for Manchester United, AC Milan and Rangers but was still hungry for football as he approached his 38th birthday.
Southgate took full advantage of an invaluable opportunity to pick the brain of a master.
Wilkins will always remain a great of the English game. And few would have enjoyed this Russian adventure, overseen by his one-time room-mate, more than he.
His death in April at the age of 61 was met with grief and disbelief throughout the English football fraternity.
When some men die, there is a little journalistic licence in the writing of their obituaries, making them sound like better blokes than they might actually have been.
Not, though, with Wilkins.
When he was universally lauded for his uncommon decency, generosity and courtesy, there was not a word of embellishment.
On the face of it, Wilkins’ time with Palace could barely have gone any worse.
He played just one league match, a 6-1 home thrashing by Liverpool, broke a foot and headed off to manage QPR just three months later.
Yet the impression he left on England’s future manager, as a professional and as a man, was immense.
Smith, who had spotted Southgate’s leadership potential at such an early age, is adamant his brief time with Wilkins was a significant formative experience.
Of course, there were many more key moments along the way on Southgate’s journey to the brink of immortality.
A limp display in a youth-team game after which Smith told him he ought to “become a travel agent instead” has often been quoted.
Similarly, there was a bullying performance from Norwich striker Robert Fleck in one of Southgate’s earliest first-team games in the Zenith Data Systems Cup.
As a manager, though, there is little doubt of the night which toughened Southgate and sharpened his thought process.
In October 2009, having survived Middlesbrough’s relegation from the Premier League at the end of his third season in charge, Southgate led his team into a home match with Derby.
Boro were a point off the top of the Championship after Derby were beaten 2-0 but attendances had slumped and the atmosphere on Teesside was toxic.
Southgate was subjected to widespread abuse that night and chief executive Keith Lamb invited him into the boardroom to sack him.
Gordon Strachan had been lined up to replace him and would lead Boro on a sharp descent down the table.
When Southgate is now lauded to the high heavens for the intelligence and good grace with which he has led England to a first World Cup semi-final in 28 years, he is only too aware that affections can be fickle in football.
He had skippered Boro to their only major trophy, the 2004 League Cup, and also to the Europa League final — yet here he was being derided, even in victory.
He has admitted he was seething at the perceived injustice of the decision to get rid of him.
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The next time he got to manage, he would have the courage of his convictions and, whether succeeding or failing, he’d manage in his own style.
And it is a style which has inspired an inexperienced England to historic deeds.
Wilkins, that most cultured of midfielders, would have approved of England’s intelligent football as well as their manager’s good humour and sharp waistcoat.
He might also have enjoyed the way the ‘kid’ he once inspired has made an old-school brand of Englishness feel fashionable again.
