Gareth Southgate has decided his future. It was described as 50-50 before the Euro 2024 final, but after losing to Spain, the mood was naturally much gloomier.
Part of that was the atmosphere, as much as the painful late defeat. Southgate decided to stay after the 2022 World Cup because he felt the team was in a good place and there was no real issue with a mere quarter-final elimination. England narrowly lost a 50-50 game against France, so the mood towards Southgate was positive.
After this Euros, it was anything but. Throughout the tournament he repeatedly made reference to the fan opprobrium and the beer cups being thrown at him. That will to castigate Southgate – his “professional capability… questioned beyond belief”, as he put it – has similarly sat alongside the wider punditry discussion around the team. That went from one extreme to another over Euro 2024. Southgate is said to have been irritated by the extent of the criticism from pundits he knows personally.
Some of this was just the circus that surrounds England and the intensity of an international tournament. Part of it, lamentably, was also justified.
It is difficult not to keep returning to a line said by figures within the camp before this tournament. “Gareth is good at everything except the football.”
The Euro 2024 final put that in the sharpest terms, as a Spanish team that arguably had an inferior squad won with a better idea surrounding the game. The view within the winners’ camp was that Southgate had not been able to use the talents at his disposal; that he has great players but they are placed into a reactive approach.
It is why this tournament appears to be his best in terms of pure outcome – a final on foreign land – but has the fewest redeeming features. England are at a point where they should be getting this far. Rather than that final step, though, the squad fell into all the same old traps but with new twists.
England were again beaten by the first proper contender they faced. They again lost the game due to their inferior idea of how to play the game.
Just as there are two sides to Southgate, though, there are two sides to this discussion. It is not about his wider management but the final fine details.
While there will now be reappraisals of Southgate’s entire tenure, it should always be remembered he was key to taking England this far. He will be a hugely important figure in the history of English football, and for the better. The squad might eventually have benefitted from the brilliant talent that started to come through the huge infrastructure transformation, but that wasn’t quite the case in 2018. That first semi-final appearance since 1996 came through canny management, and clever exploitation of tournament luck. It was all about the initial fine details.
That fitted into Southgate’s grand aim to change the culture of the team. This was a resounding success. The players started to look forward to joining up with the camp, and to tournaments. They have all personally liked him. Southgate is a gentleman, but it went beyond that. He won the loyalty of a lot of players by really backing them on bigger issues, especially the response to taking the knee.
It was also why Southgate kept picking lieutenants like Kieran Trippier and even Harry Kane, despite surprise about their actual football input elsewhere. The view from the inside was that they positively influenced the chemistry of the team.
All of this created the iron resolve that did actually matter through so many tournaments, but especially Euro 2024. It was really how England got to the final. Previous sides would probably have wilted, especially amid the noise that surrounded so many winnable but awkward matches. England were quite close to “an Iceland” against Slovakia. They came through due to something deeper.
It got them through so many issues. But there was one issue that resolve couldn’t work through, at least against the most exacting opposition.
In applying such a rigid tactical structure to the team, Southgate essentially came up against his own limits. This is where other elite teams are more privately critical of the manager. It’s where they say he lacks the finer tactical appreciation.
It directly translated into play. The most prominent was the pressing, which led to so many turgid England games. The coaching staff were so beholden to their structure, and so risk-averse, that it meant one player was always held back from applying the approach in the way the best teams do. It shaped all of their games for the negative. You only have to compare it to how Spain hounded England all over the pitch in the final. Southgate brought up England’s backward throw-in near Unai Simon’s area shortly after Cole Palmer’s goal as a turning point but that directly came from the different ways that the two teams pressed. England were hurried back towards their own goal. Spain always had the adventure to play through it.
Southgate’s England didn’t have that greater vision, which is why we may will never have that picture of him with a winner’s medal.
All of this discussion would of course be different had the penalties approach that Southgate has evidently fixed been applied in the Euro 2020 final against Italy. Even that loss, however, was ultimately down to the same failings. England receded when they had the lead. They couldn’t control a game.
That should be the one that really hurts, that will still “haunt” England, in the way Declan Rice said. Everything went Southgate’s way, from playing at Wembley to the early goal, and they still lost. Here, Spain were just a better team.
It should still be somewhat galling that, as Southgate has tried to incrementally get England closer to glory, other big sides have fallen and risen again to still win trophies. Spain are just the latest. England’s 58 years without silverware is now unparalleled among major football nations.
That was feasibly only minutes from ending even in Berlin, but it now feels so much further away. Spain were playing a different game, something so clear.
England by contrast came confused and left even more so. There was a sense of Southgate making it up as he went along, as illustrated by so many team and personnel decisions that were reversed. The attack didn’t work. One of the final moments of the tournament was Jude Bellingham complaining about his teammates’ running. That attack, even with this star at the centre, never moved fluently.
That was very different to 2018 and Euro 2020, where there was clarity. It was the clearest sign that it was time for Southgate to go, as he hit a limit and couldn’t figure out how to get around it. Such indecision is a classic sign of just that.
A more progressive modern coach is required for the final touches, someone that can come in and see the full picture.
It should never be forgotten that the next person, no matter what they do, will be building on Southgate’s work.
He has restored respectability to England. He just hasn’t delivered glory. It’s difficult to imagine England without Southgate. But it was even harder to imagine his football finally bringing the trophy that the talent available should.