Gareth Southgate’s final answer was as fair a summary as anyone’s. “We are now consistently back in the matches that matter - it’s the last step that we haven’t been able to do”, he said, before walking out of Sunday's post-match press conference and into the uncomforting Berlin night after defeat to Spain in the Euro 2024 Final, with fairytales absent and dreams still unrealised.
Southgate had admitted he “wants to win so much on Sunday that it hurts.” Instead, those years of hurt tick on ever-upwards, to 60 by the next World Cup. But Southgate - who resigned on Tuesday - must be credited. If not able to change the narrative, he has at least made it readable.
No trophy, but England now reach finals, score last-minute goals, come from behind to win and, when they can’t, win on penalties instead. The players don’t earn stupid red cards, aren’t cliquey, more often rise to pressure than buckle under it, and don’t dread playing for England.
It is a peculiar sort of logic that, given all that, still leads plenty of people to the conclusion that Southgate was just a very lucky man.
When he took over in 2016, England fans of a certain age could remember Geoff Hurst’s last-minute fourth goal in the 1966 World Cup Final. They could remember David Platt’s last-minute swivel-volley winner against Belgium at Italia 90, Gazza’s tears, Gazza in the dentist’s chair, Michael Owen’s Argentina wondergoal at France 98.
These were England fans’ most cherished moments, one being of our own player weeping after getting a yellow card. England fans were starved of reasons to never stop believing.
It has been Southgate’s second life’s work, in his own words, “to try and bring success to England as a nation, to try and improve English football.”
Colombia 2018: England’s first World Cup penalty shootout win. Knocking Germany, inflictors of so much of England’s tournament pain down the years, out of Euro 2020, then breezing past Ukraine 4-0 in the quarters and beating Denmark to reach a first final since 1966.
Slovakia, Switzerland and the Netherlands, all dramatically beaten en route to the final of Euro 2024. Two finals in three years. Three semi-finals in four tournaments after none in the previous 10. Never have England enjoyed such a highly concentrated period of success (albeit success that cannot be placed in the trophy cabinet).
Southgate took on the job after the ignominy of Iceland, after Sam Allardyce’s disgraced exit, out of a sense of duty that has always burnt within him since discovering his grandfather served in the Royal Marines in the Second World War - the same sense of service that saw his hand pop up when Terry Venables needed a sixth penalty taker in the Euro 96 semi against Germany. Southgate hadn’t taken one in his life; he was doing it for England. This job too.
He never did watch that play, Dear England. Not his style. A fun thought experiment: would Sam Allardyce have watched a play about himself?
As the FA’s head of elite development between January 2011 and July 2012, Southgate set about ensuring schoolboys under 13 up and down the country were taught football through small-sided games, with focus on passing, on technique. He had long felt English football lagged behind Europe’s elite. An unused substitute when England thrashed Germany 5-1 in Munich in 2001, he gave an interview at the time, criticising what he felt had been a poor performance. He visited France’s Clairefontaine training base to discover how to engender a sense of home at St George’s Park. To borrow from a TV advert, he believed in better.
He learnt yet more as England Under-21 manager from 2013-2016, before becoming the senior manager, initially as interim boss because he wasn’t sure he was up to the task. He had turned up to his interview with Dan Ashworth and Greg Clarke armed with a dossier four inches thick of how he planned to change the England team.
Southgate thought hard about all aspects of the job; he thinks hard about everything. He sat, over dinner in Sochi in June 2017, with Steve Holland - a lifelong friendship with his trusted assistant manager having since bloomed - using salt and pepper pots to show how shifting to a back three would help England progress. A year later, back in Russia, it did.
He knew improved access for the media would wash away much of the antagonism that had come before, that had played a not insignificant part in generation after generation of England teams failing to even threaten to match 1966. England camps were made more enjoyable, more relaxed. The introduction of commemorative legacy caps sewed each of his players onto the tapestry of England’s history.
His Dear England letter to the nation after Covid and on the eve of the Euros in 2021 presented Best Gareth, the optimal point between freshness in a role that his since weathered him and expertise of having been there (Russia), done that (finished fourth), and got the t-shirt (waistcoat). When, after those Euros, he briefly considered stepping down during a three-week holiday, appalled by the racist abuse of three of his black players, it was just one of a myriad of times he leant towards his humanity. The role of football manager always came second.
They say his job is not unlike a politician’s, and time, rightly or wrongly, became a mould on Southgate’s eight-year tenure. Each England fan, each podcasting ex-player, voiced their own niggling gripe, a micro-decision or micro-selection error that had turned them away from Southgate. He never did truly recover in the public’s eyes from the mass walkout at Molineux when Hungary battered England 4-0 in June 2022. Pausing for thought after beating the Netherlands in Wednesday’s semi-final, he said in response to the criticism that had stalked him through Germany: “We all want to be loved, right?” Professionally, perhaps only his players and those who have worked closely with him still do.
In the end, cup-throwing, meme-making criticism of Southgate has often been deeply personal, and it has hurt him. Boring, cautious, beta, weak. “Gareth Southgate would wear a life jacket in the bath.” Tactically cautious? Sure. But weak? He dropped Joe Hart and effectively ended the international career of England’s then all-time record scorer, Wayne Rooney. In both cases, the Yes Man was saying No.
You get the sense it has taken a superhuman effort from the patriotic Englishman to keep his head above the parapet of armchair critique, coming further under siege in recent years until Tuesday's resignation.
What of the football? Southgate’s life is mapped out in penalty shootouts, and his greatest achievement as manager has been lifting that curse. Allardyce aside, quotes can be found of all five previous England managers claiming shootouts are a lottery or cannot be practised. Southgate disagreed, studied, innovated, and oversaw three shootout wins from four as boss. He had told his squad in 2018 they are not burdened by past England failures — superb communication skills from England's most thoughtful manager bringing tangible reward.
It cannot be escaped that England had presentable knockout fixtures at Russia 2018, Euro 2020 and Euro 2024. Runs far into all three tournaments were helped by the luck of the draw, yet Southgate’s England have never played better than in Qatar, officially their worst of four tournament showings, romping through to the quarter-finals where they dominated favourites France but lost.
Southgate and Holland have studied tournament-winning teams, like Portugal who won Euro 2016 despite drawing all three group games, winning just once in 90 minutes, playing turgid football throughout but, with a solid defence, somehow finding a way.
Scraping to the final, propelled by individual moments of majesty, was not England’s Euro 2024 masterplan, but when things aren’t clicking as you’d like them to, better to have a ‘win ugly’ lever to pull than to look on haplessly as poor football morphs into a tournament exit. That’s English fatalism, and Southgate has conquered it too.
Where Pep Guardiola can hone every aspect of Manchester City’s play each day, international managers get between 45 and 80 days a year with their players. An excuse of sorts, but while France, Belgium and Portugal were also flat in Germany, England underperformed.
Alongside their one elite midfielder, Declan Rice, a midfield quartet of Conor Gallagher, Adam Wharton, Kobbie Mainoo and right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold really wasn’t the envy of Europe. No, the bookies’ favourites were not preordained champions. But they did boast Europe’s finest attacking options. How little we saw of it. There was no beating the press of Denmark or Spain; no penetrating the packed defences of Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Switzerland. They struggled throughout Southgate’s reign at both tacks.
Southgate has worked so hard to relieve the weight that had crippled the shoulders of England players for decades, but as confidence grew after an impressive first three tournaments under him, so too did expectation and pressure. A bit of the old crept back in at these Euros as England became victims of their own Southgate era success.
What had worked in three previous tournaments was suddenly not working. Phil Foden and Jude Bellingham were cramping each other’s style. Declan Rice was misused. In three group games, three midfielders were trialled next to him. England were limp and lifeless and 86 seconds from going out to Slovakia. Everyone saw it.
But the nonfunctioning of a football team cannot always be because of its manager. Bellingham was guilty of holding onto the ball too long, Harry Kane plodded, Kyle Walker killed England’s one sustained period of pressure in the final when, two minutes after Palmer’s leveller, he pelted a throw-in, deep in Spain’s half, not forward but back to John Stones. Soon the ball was with Jordan Pickford, then soon back with Spain, then soon past Pickford and into the net for Spain’s winner. If England had been ‘Moments FC’ at their bicycle-kick best, then at their error-prone worst too.
Southgate was fortunate Bellingham’s mesmeric moment of magic bailed him out, but we all need a little luck at times. He had explained he wanted to replace a shattered Bellingham, except “you know he is capable of those sorts of moments.” Perhaps the England manager, not for the first time, was making his own luck.
After a rather obstinate lack of changes in the group stage, Gallagher came on to bite at the heels of the tiring Slovaks in extra-time and did just that. Palmer, Alexander-Arnold and Ivan Toney scored in the shootout off the bench against Switzerland. Palmer and Ollie Watkins were thrown in to stretched the Netherlands. The former assisted the latter for a winner with 89 minutes and 59 seconds on the clock. No time to celebrate, Gallagher and Ezri Konsa on for the final two minutes to finish the job. Palmer off the bench to equalise against Spain in the final. Tactically too conservative? Yes. But in-game management has long been a stick used to beat Southgate with. This summer he showed he can change a game with subs, who he'd done well to keep onside and ready for when called upon.
In 2019, England matched their record of 38 goals in a calendar set, handily, in 1966. In 2021, they then scored 52. But since Qatar, when he seriously considered stepping down, that sort of rampancy has deserted England, a skin-shedding moment to signal the natural end of a life cycle.
Southgate’s contract was up in December, but he has now walked as expected, with no obvious candidates waiting in the wings. He wrote in his statement he had given the job his all — few could doubt that. The FA, who pushed hard for him to stay, must now push harder still to keep him on as a development consultant. He is the Englishman who knows most about tournament football — as a player, as a youth-team manager, as the seniors’ manager. We waste such expertise at our peril.
Between 1968 and 2016, England won six tournament knockout matches. Since 2018, they have won nine. While he has been manager, England have won Euros and World Cups at every age group, aided by the England DNA youth programme he helped introduce. It is invaluable for the future that our players have played in and won matches of that magnitude. Unquestionably, England are getting closer.
But tournament exits to Croatia, Italy and Spain show how far England must still come. Success in international football requires keeping the ball and being brave with it. They had just 34 per cent possession on Sunday, completing 294 passes. Southgate’s tactical caution delivered much, but it produced just seven wins in 29 matches against the established powerhouses of world football. He’s taken English football out of the dark ages. Now to find the light. A Sisyphean task? The Impossible Job? We’ll see.
After eight years in a job that consumed him and after his decades of dreaming, he exits as modern international football’s nearly man, but he has been nearly there more than any other Englishman. You’ll never sing that. And neither will he.
Once more unto the breach, once more it was close but no cigar. Not for want of trying: this has been the Southgate way.
