Although Gareth Southgate was always clear that he would finish his current job either on an open-top bus parade or banished to the Tower of London, he probably didn’t have the indignity of being pelted with plastic beer cups on his personal bingo card of humiliations inflicted on England managers.
He’s been here before, of course, donning a cardboard box in an ill-advised pizza commercial to indicate his remorse at missing that Euro 96 penalty. And just as when stepping up to take that penalty in the semi-final against Germany when more technically-gifted players shirked the challenge, sometimes Southgate’s sense of national duty does seem to take on a masochistic streak.
