I detected a degree of surprise among those people who were uncommonly cheered by Sir Keir Starmer’s election victory that England failed to beat Spain in the final of the European Championship. That wasn’t in the script. For those Labour supporters in the press and floating in the shallow trough of luvviedom, an England victory would have been the first thing to gild this brave new era of kindness, generosity of spirit and diversity.
I would not begrudge Southgate a knighthood, given the state of the national game when he took over
These were the sorts of qualities associated with the England manager Gareth Southgate, who needed no more encouragement to bob down on one knee in support of a divisive and extremist political cause, Black Lives Matter, than did the Labour leader, if you remember. Freed from the shackles of nasty and incompetent Conservatism, the England team could finally express itself – including the large proportion of players who were the offspring of immigrants from the… what’s that ludicrous phrase?… global majority. How fitting that would be and an immediate riposte to the Forces of Horrid – Farage and Braverman et al.
It was of course under a Labour government that England won its only ever meaningful trophy, even if the team (Bobby and Jack excepted) were largely Tories by inclination. Most sportsmen were Tories in those days, but not any more. Even the managers we have imported into the game – Pep Guardiola, Jürgen Klopp – are lefties. All the right has is Neil Warnock and Matt Le Tissier – oh, and maybe Jose Mourinho. The cultural establishment of our nation has never been further to the left – so much so that those who do not embrace an uplifting and vacuous liberal creed simply keep their gobs shut.
Southgate has now gone, having handed in his resignation to the Football Association. (Yes, yes. The joke is that they handed it to Phil Foden, who passed it back to Luke Shaw, etc.) It was without question the right decision and it will have hurt him to make it. There are plenty of things to like about Southgate. He is plainly a decent man and no fool, either. I have spent the past six years insisting that he is not up to the job, but I underestimated the importance of creating an atmosphere of unity and defiance within the England camp, which he did superbly: it was certainly not ever thus. It was that spirit which took England through to the final – again.
But even so, Southgate’s flaws were still proudly on display in that deciding game. Should we really have waited until the 70th minute to attack with a sense of purpose? Was it wholly necessary to keep Harry Kane, the weirdly sluggish centre forward, as a holding midfielder? One of the major faults with this England team is that they are so stultifyingly dull – and yet comprise probably the most exciting players ever seen in an England shirt, or at least seen since the early 2000s.
There is no question that the record books will show that the Southgate era has been the most successful period in England’s football history since the mid-1960s. But that’s on paper – in reality it has been one grim, attritional slog after the other. And the fact remains that under Southgate, England very rarely won against teams ranked in the top ten in the world.
So it was in this latest competition. Spain were praised for the bravura and excitement of their attacking play and thoroughly deserved to win the final – but they were far from being favourites at the outset of the tournament and I do not believe that their players are superior to our own. That attacking verve came from a manager who was not terrified of losing. How I wished, as yet another England attack deliquesced into Bellingham playing it back to Kane, Kane back to Rice, Rice back to Stones and Stones back to Pickford, that we might play an entire game with a little bit of brio, rather than waiting until the 92nd minute. Spain’s attack is indeed formidable, but they are often defensively remiss. Why, then, play to an opponent’s strengths?
I wonder what it was that convinced Gareth to resign. I hope it wasn’t being pelted with beer by angry England fans. I hope, too, that it wasn’t the odium which poured forth from his former colleagues – Gary Lineker, Rio Ferdinand, Micah Richards, Ian Wright – after successive drab performances in the group stage of this latest tournament, although it wouldn’t surprise me. But I hope it was his intelligence that provoked the decision, a rational assessment. He has taken us this far, which is no small achievement – but seems entirely unable to take us any further. His management style is not suited to winning; it is, rather, suited to not losing. The 2026 World Cup may have enticed him – one more heave! But he must know that one more heave wouldn’t do it. I wonder if he accepts that? Either way, I would not begrudge him a knighthood, given the state that the national game was in when he took over and the enormous improvement which quickly followed.
There is not a huge queue ready and waiting in the wings to take us all to glory. The bookies have the currently unemployed Graham Potter as the favourite – who is, it has to be said, attack-minded and progressive, but he found dealing with expensive moppets at Chelsea a stretch too far and has never actually won anything. Eddie Howe, the Newcastle United manager, is often mentioned and he is talented enough, I suspect, and of the kind of pleasingly agreeable temperament much beloved by the FA. However, I imagine the FA will prefer to keep it in-house and appoint the Brummie manager of the England under-21s, Lee Carsley, who has never managed a club team. That was of course the route by which Gareth Southgate got the job and there is nothing the FA likes more than continuation – even if, a little cruelly, it is a continuation of failure, or of strictly limited success.
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