Gregg Berhalter believes Gareth Southgate deserves to be recognised as one of England’s best managers of all time.
Berhalter established a connection with Southgate when he asked for advice after getting the job as United States boss in 2018. They have built up a mutual respect ever since but Berhalter revealed his admiration for the job Southgate has done with England and the way he has gone about it.
US boss Berhalter said: “I think if they have a run at this World Cup, a really good run, you could argue that he’s one of the most successful England managers of all time.
“Say they go to the final, then his three major tournaments would be: final, final and semi final. That’s a very strong record in international tournaments. I experienced it myself. The public wants the team to win. I understand that, I’m sure Gareth understands that.
“Even if it is a friendly game, even if it is a Nations League Group game, they want to see the team win and that’s our responsibility as managers and that’s something that comes back to us.
“From what I know from coaching the national team, you’re only really as good as your last game. England has had a difficult time recently so he’s been getting a lot of slack. But what I would say, let’s focus on the major tournaments. European Championships he went to the final. World Cup: they went to the semi final.
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“Look at that record, look at it in just major tournaments alone and that’s why we play the game at international level: for major tournaments. He’s done a fantastic job and, to me, there’s no really denying that.”
Berhalter is the first man to have played and coached the US national team and the 49-year-old has, like Southgate, championed young players and given them a chance to shine as well as encouraging them to have a voice. There were a lot of parallels from when he took over compared to when I took over,” said Berhalter. “That’s why I thought it was really impactful to reach out to him and see if he had some minutes to spare and if I could just learn from him.
“It was really important. It was brilliant. The story from when he took over the squad was brilliant, that first couple of years of how he managed through that, I really admired that.”
Berhalter believes England are among the favourites to win the tournament but, despite taking the youngest squad to Qatar, he also insists his players must be ambitious and approach it as two different challenges.
He added: “England is still probably one of the favourites to win the World Cup. The squad that Gareth can choose from is probably legitimately 40 players deep. 40 players of high quality deep. Any manager would love that opportunity.
“What I would say is that we are legitimately looking at this as two separate tournaments. You have a Group stage tournament where you have a tournament of four teams and all you need to do is be in the top two. That’s our starting point.
“Then from there, if you’re in the top two then you have to earn the right to play in this knockout tournament and this knockout tournament is only four games long and you don’t have to be the best team in the world to win that knockout tournament.
“All you have to be is be better than the four teams you face on that particular day. All we want to do is to play our best possible game in that knock-out tournament if we get that opportunity.
“Then anything we’ll be happy with. If we go to this game, advance into the knock-out tournament, play this game and then we play our best game but don’t win, we can still walk off the field and feel proud.
“If we do win then we’ll advance into that next round and also feel proud. So it’s really hard to say concrete that we want to go this far or do that. But we want to use this Group stage tournament to get into that other special tournament.
“From being a player in the World Cup then being a coach in the World Cup, I’m really blessed and I’m really lucky. I’m really excited to bring this group out and show the world what this group is about. Because it’s a fantastic group of individuals, it’s a really tight group of guys and it’s gong to be fun. It’s going to be fun for the whole world.”
