When the Gareth Southgate interview from L’Équipe bounced back to England on 14 May, it prompted a few phone calls between newspaper desks and their reporters. The England manager, preparing for Euro 2024 and under contract with the Football Association until December, had been asked the obligatory, inevitable question. Would this summer be his last shot at tournament glory with the team? Now we picked over his answer. Was there anything new in it?
The first thing to say was that even though it was most assuredly Southgate – speaking at the FA’s international media day – it did not sound completely like him. “If we don’t win, there is indeed a good chance that I won’t stay in office.” It was just the turn of phrase. Then again, here we had an Englishman speaking in English, being translated into French and back again into English.
The specific detail of the original is always going to be blurred slightly and it was easy to recall Arsène Wenger’s lament about how his words would often “rebound” with greater force from across the Channel. “As I have been here for eight years,” Southgate continued, “the end is approaching for me.” Wait, what? This was a surefire easy pick-up headline. Southgate: the end is nigh. But did he really put it like that?
Welcome to the grand tournament countdown, the excitement crackling and ready to go up a notch when England play their first warm-up game against Bosnia and Herzegovina at St James’ Park on Monday; the second is against Iceland at Wembley next Friday. And welcome, of course, to that pre-finals staple – obsessing over the future of the manager, as intrinsic as pull-out wallcharts and fractured metatarsals.
Southgate’s L’Équipe sit-down had an arresting quality and yet when it was pulled apart, the sense was consistent with what he has said for the past year or so. It was a variation only in semantic terms. Southgate was never going to veer off script, especially not this close to the tournament. For him, it is win or bust in Germany. Or very much in this territory.
The manager’s line is underpinned by characteristic humility. Southgate knows he must deliver if there is to be a climate for him to continue in the job for the 2026 World Cup. He remembers the reaction when one of his predecessors, Fabio Capello, signed a new contract before the 2010 World Cup, which would end in disaster for England. “Everybody said: ‘What the bloody hell are they doing? He should be proving himself in the tournament,’” Southgate told GQ this week.
By delivering, Southgate means winning or certainly that is how he has framed it for the players; he does not want the notion of glorious failure to be in their minds. They should not be scared to say they are in it to win it. And by a climate for him to continue, he essentially means the feeling in the country among the fanbase.
Southgate considered stepping down after the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, having been spooked by the venomous reaction to his team’s 4-0 defeat by Hungary at Molineux in June of that year. He discussed with his assistant, Steve Holland, whether to announce the intention before the tournament; he did not want any negativity towards him to affect the players.
One of the keys to Southgate staying on was the general positivity among supporters in the wake of the narrow quarter-final defeat by France, which he probably felt through the media. It was significant to see the Sun splash its front page with a story about how the fans as well as the players were “begging” him to continue. Southgate has always been bothered by what people think. He is a reader of the room and that will again be a factor after the tournament in Germany, likely the single biggest one because he will definitely be able to count on the support of the FA.
Only a group-stage meltdown would change the picture for his employers and even then it would most likely be Southgate jumping before they felt compelled to give him the push. The succession question is a nightmare for the FA and not only because of the dearth of English candidates, with surely the best one, Eddie Howe, settled at Newcastle. Could Graham Potter enter the equation?
It is because the FA values Southgate’s work enormously – his runs to the business end in three tournaments (semi-final, final, quarter-final); the environment he has created for the players, successfully tackling the age-old problem of the weight of the shirt. It is sometimes said that a manager can only have 11 happy players; that the rest are left to grumble. Southgate’s ratio is far more favourable, the respect he commands in the dressing room almost total.
It is harder to gauge where he stands with the fans because in such a huge and diverse group you can look for any opinion and find it. That said, it is not difficult to hear the one about how Southgate simply must win now after the previous near-misses and because of the attacking talent available to him. Anything less would be failure/deserve incarceration in the Tower of London.
Would Southgate want to carry on if he and his team won the Euros? The likelihood would be yes. He does want to manage a big club but one thing is plain: he would not get to work with Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden and Bukayo Saka in his next job. Then there is the allure of the World Cup in two years’ time – just that it is the World Cup.
The more interesting question is what Southgate would do in the event of, say, another quarter- or semi-final exit. Would the external narrative be sufficiently adverse as to see him fall on his sword?
If England were to lose against a less-fancied opponent (ie not France), the 53-year-old may conclude it would be time to quit and wait for an opening at club level.
The FA’s decision to agree a contract with Southgate until December looks increasingly smart. The idea was to provide a cooling-off period after the Euros, a time to smooth any handover were Southgate to leave. Also, to try to ensure that any doubt over the manager’s position did not dominate the conversation around the tournament and become a distraction.
What has transpired, too, is that Southgate has not really ridden the managerial merry-go-round. He has been of serious interest to Manchester United but his publicly stated refusal to enter into discussions with any suitor while he is contracted to the FA – or at least until after the Euros – has ruled out the possibility of him lining up a club move pre-tournament.
Nobody would have been able to get their heads around that; there would just have been too much potential for conflict. Perhaps the Julen Lopetegui affair with Spain before the 2018 World Cup stands as a cautionary tale. After it was announced he was to become the new Real Madrid manager after the finals, Spain sacked him. Southgate’s focus is clear even if his future is not.
