There’s something Gareth Southgate’s most vocal England critics don’t take into account…and with his future up in the air, he has a chance to shut them up.
As we write this, the position on Gareth Southgate’s future appears to be this: the FA want him to stay, regardless of what happens against Spain on Sunday, but his own stance is not yet clear.
Would you blame him, at this point, if a victorious Southgate were to pull an Aime Jacquet and waltz off with the trophy, uncharacteristically yelling ‘see you later, lads’, and never return to the dugout ever again?
Absolutely not. There he is, even without a trophy, by far the most consistently high-performing England manager in 60 years.
Gareth Southgate’s England record speaks for itself
England’s record at major tournaments since Southgate got the unexpected chance to take over from Sam Allardyce in 2016 has been superb by any measure: they have reached three semi-finals out of four and gone on to reach the final of consecutive European Championships.
That means that Southgate has had more semis than any other manager in the national team’s history. In fact, the rest of them had just three semis between them, with Alf Ramsey the only previous manager to have one better by achieving a glorious climax in 1966. On Sunday, Southgate will become the first and only England manager ever to have led them into two finals. Some didn’t even get as far as taking them to two tournaments.
In spite of this, Southgate has faced ardent criticism from some sections of the England fanbase and media for his failure to go all the way, with some feeling that their success has come in spite of him, rather than because of him.
And yes, like everyone else, we have had criticisms of Southgate – and confess we have wondered, amid the deeply unimpressive performances earlier in the tournament, whether this side might now benefit from a different set of ideas behind them. There are deleted drafts from the Slovakia game sitting in every football website’s CMS, including our own, to bear that out.
But there’s nothing revisionist in saying we will always defend Southgate against the mouth-breathers who question why he was still in the job going into Euro 2024 having taken over a crap side who lost to Iceland months earlier in 2016, to going within a penalty shootout of winning the next Euros. Earlier this summer, he was greeted with boos and pelted with beer cups.
The entitlement is genuinely astonishing, and it would be incredibly sweet for Southgate to stick two fingers up at those critics by bringing the trophy home, which you suspect would be the closest he has ever come to sticking two fingers up at anyone.
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International managers are just judged differently
It’s always tempting to reach for the rather valid excuses that surround international football, compared with club football: the inability to just sign players to fix problem positions, the lack of meaningful time on the training pitch, players’ lack of chemistry and understanding…all of which are fair.
But we don’t really talk enough about how knockout competitions are the absolute worst way to determine whether a manager is actually any good or not.
I think we can all agree Sir Alex Ferguson’s long spell at Manchester United is a pretty lofty barometer by which to judge managers. On top of his 13 league titles, Ferguson managed United to five FA Cups, four League Cups, two Champions Leagues and a Cup Winners’ Cup (as well as others like the Charity Shield, Super Cup etc).
Impressive, no doubt. Only, if we judge him by international managers’ standards, even Ferguson ‘failed’ in those knockout competitions a lot, lot more than he succeeded. Seventy-four chances he had to win a trophy, and he only won 12 – an 84% failure rate. It took him six goes to win his first at Old Trafford. Those 12 victories came from 26 semi-final appearances. Rubbish. Unacceptable. Bottler. Get him out.
Even Ferguson’s best teams could be prone to it. After United’s 1999 treble, they won a further three league titles in four years – and precisely zero FA Cups, League Cups or Champions League. His last great all-conquering side, who won four league titles and appeared in three Champions League finals in five years, didn’t win an FA Cup: they were runners-up once and semi-finalists twice (and won just one of those three Champions League finals, by the way).
For the benefit of the exceptionally thick, we are not saying that Southgate is a Ferguson-calibre manager, merely that cup competitions, by their nature, are incredibly slippery, and that expecting Southgate to somehow be immune to that, and judging him so harshly for not being, is absurd.
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More of football than we like to imagine is down to luck and random chance. This year, England have been the summer’s major beneficiaries of that. In 2021 and 2022, they were a far better, far more convincing outfit, but fell to a penalty shoot-out and a very tricky quarter-final draw against eventual finalists France. Is Southgate a better manager for getting the rub of the green this time, or a worse one? We say: neither.
To state the absolute bleeding obvious, league titles reward overall consistency, because any slips caused by those elements of luck and random chance are just as likely to cause similar stumbles by a title rival somewhere along the way. But in a knockout competition, one mistake, even one that has absolutely nothing to do with the manager, could send you home. They are intentionally designed as such, because it makes it that much more compelling.
There are also far fewer opportunities for international managers to put things right. In eight club seasons at United, Ferguson would have had 32 chances to win something major; Southgate is currently working away at his fourth in eight years. If England lose the final and he stays on, he will have to wait another two years for the next.
Reaching two finals and a semi in light of that speaks more highly of Southgate than the fact that England have been a bit boring to watch along the way. Safety-first football and conservatism can be frustrating for fans, but Southgate’s record suggests it is the best way to minimise the chaotic elements and try to decide things on merit.
And if they win…well, we look forward to seeing who will be the one getting doused in beer out in North America, and whether Southgate’s achievements will be made to look all the more extraordinary by hindsight.
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