Gareth Southgate: The ‘Almost Manager’ of The Three Lions – News18

“The crosses of St. George are flying all around me. Gareth Southgate, the whole of England is with you”

This might seem like an epitaph after English hearts crumbled once again against Spain in Berlin in July 2024, adding more salt to the never-fully-recovered wounds of the penalty debacle against Italy at Wembley in 2021 or that World Cup semi-final night in Moscow in 2018.

Instead, the voice belongs to an era three decades ago, when the commentary bellowed at the Old Wembley in 1996. A boyish-looking Southgate missed a crucial penalty during the shootout against Germany, to hand the arch-nemesis a decisive win. Later at the same venue in London, Die Mannschaft would eventually be coronated as champions. This is one coronation no royalist or self-respecting Briton wanted to witness.

Gareth Southgate’s legacy as a player wasn’t much to write home about. The Crystal Palace, Aston Villa, and Middlesborough defender was more remembered for what he didn’t accomplish than for what he did – that dreaded penalty miss.

In the noughties, Southgate transitioned from player to manager at Middlesborough with little to no interregnum. When Southgate took charge at the club where he hung up his boots, he didn’t even possess the required coaching qualifications (the UEFA Pro License) to manage a club at the highest echelons.

The restrictions meant that Southgate could only be appointed initially for twelve weeks. The club allowed him to stay on as manager under special circumstances, making a case with the Premier League that Southgate had been precluded from taking coaching classes, due to his taxing schedule as an international player, but would soon complete his coaching qualifications.

Southgate failed to keep Middlesborough in the Premier League as they fell through the trap door, to the Championship and soon the floor beneath Southgate too gave way and he was shown the door.

Southgate spent four years in football wilderness before being given the chance to succeed Stuart Pearce, as the manager of the England under-21 side. Fate has a sadistic sense of schadenfreude, only fair to use a German word that connects two Englishmen who missed crucial penalties against Germany in a major tournament semi-final. Pearce earned his share of infamy by missing from the spot against West Germany in the 1990 World Cup in Italy.

Sometimes the best decisions in life are the ones we don’t make. Southgate indicated he didn’t want the England men’s senior team job when Roy Hodgson vacated in 2016. Instead, in another twist of fate, Southgate became England’s caretaker manager in 2016, when Sam Allardyce infamously resigned after one game in charge.

It was the same old England back in 2016. I mean England melted in front of Iceland at the Euros – the wordplay writes itself. The usual – a team with superstars made famous by the home of the world’s most watched league, but lacked cohesiveness as a unit, the quarter-final specialists, the hoodoo of penalties lingered and the age-old club versus country debate split unity and bred factions.

Little was expected from a reticent, mild-mannered, and at best modest former English player who was the accidental England manager. It was once the most sought-after job in all the land. The job attracted as much scrutiny as the individual ensconced and living at Number 10 Downing Street. It was a job for the most accomplished of English and occasionally foreign managers. Gareth Southgate didn’t have much to write home about as a player or little to boast about in terms of managerial success. So, stop-gap managers don’t make history, instead to use an American colloquialism, “they become history” – forgotten in the annals and just reduced to a statistic.

I quip that I support only two teams in international football – Die Mannschaft (Germany) and anyone playing England. This ABE (Anybody But England) comes from a lot of places. The boorish English fans that epitomized football hooliganism, the gloating paparazzi, the vanity of English footballers, and perhaps, I’ll make a case of colonialism and how the edifice of imperialism needs to be brought down.

My dad, an ardent sports aficionado, who inculcated my love of cricket, tennis, and football, would often say: “English fans are sore in defeat and unbearable in victory”. So, I’ve been as Portuguese as a Da Silva in the quarter-finals of the Euro 2004 and World Cup 2006, as Croatian as a Horvat in the semi-final in 2018, as Italian as a Romano at the Euro final in 2021, as French as a Dubois at the quarter-final stage in 2022, and as Spanish as a Garcia this July.

I just couldn’t stand hearing about 2024, like the way, we incessantly hear about 1966, as if it happened yesterday. There are those constant renditions of “It’s Coming Home” crooned all over by the Barmy Army. Fun fact, the song, “It’s Coming Home” by the Lightning Seeds wasn’t directly about England winning a trophy, as much as the “It” refers to the Euro 1996 tournament, which England was hosting, you know the one where Gareth Southgate missed from the spot.

Southgate and the spot, let’s move to the spotlight then.

My disdain for the institution of the English national team aside, there is much to admire with Gareth Southgate and the Three Lions he reared. An assuming mild-mannered, reticent statesman, once waistcoat-wearing manager remains a beacon of calmness in the cacophony of the English press, and boisterous Barmy Army. Southgate isn’t pugnacious or prude and epitomizes humility compared to the hubris of many of his predecessors.

After earning English infamy for missing the crucial penalty at the 1996 Euros, Southgate earned his stripes as England U21 manager and then manager of the senior team. He had first-hand experience with the ebullience and talent of English youth and tapped that reservoir to the full extent when he trusted untested cubs to become Three Lions with senior team call-ups.

A British mate of mine with Nigerian heritage once said, when I asked, about how he felt about club v country, he said, the national team didn’t appeal to him growing up, since it was very nationalistic and jingoistic.

Under Southgate, there was one seismic shift in the England squad. It wasn’t just young legs who could razzle-dazzle, but there a new sense of cultural identity grew. Apropos of French success at the 2018 World Cup, a lot of the English players too were children of immigrants with African or Afro-Caribbean heritage; they could somehow now believe that they could be both British and English. The former is a nationality, the latter, an identity that was once reserved for the Oxbridge ilk, the Eton-Harrow high graduates, the Lords, the high society, or just pure Anglo-Saxons.

Who would have thought that an English team roster that once read: Shearer, Sheringham, Sherwood, Southgate, Lineker, Beckham, Gascoigne, Neville, Scholes, Butt, Owen, and Gerrard, would now have names like Bukayo Saka, Kobe Mainoo, and Addji Keaninkin Marc-Israel Guéh – all both British and English.

There was a time of the top four in English football – Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Chelsea, and then the top six as Tottenham Hotspur accelerated to the right half of the table and Manchester City closed the gulf, thanks to money from The Gulf. This meant that English players largely came from the top half of the table and had to play in Europe’s top competition in the Champions League to be considered. Not under Southgate, as evinced in Euro 2024, where Crystal Palace shared the highest representation in the squad, alongside Liverpool and Manchester City – the latter two being some of the most decorated in English football.

The England men’s national football team has lost on penalties close to ten times in major tournaments. Under Southgate, he removed the fears of penalties and managed club v country rivalry, a bugbear that many felt precluded unified solidarity. Southgate handled the complicated cocktail, of players’ egos, and the persistent press and exceeded fans’ expectations.

But there is always the one test – yes that hurdle for all England managers since the legendary Sir Alf Ramsey. For a country obsessed with the crown jewels and how it invented modern-day football, there have been no shining jewels to buff in a sport it calls its own, well, not since 1966.

In a nutshell, Southgate reinvigorated a new vigor and vitality in the English side. However, what he couldn’t exorcise were the demons of disappointment and add to English coffers.

Southgate’s record speaks for itself. Guiding England to a 2018 World Cup semi-final, the first since 1990. The cherry on that icing, was England progressed after winning a Round of 16 clash against Colombia on…. wait for it.. penalties.

In 2021, as the pandemic added to global pessimism, Gareth Southgate added to optimism as he guided his Three Lions to the Euro finals, their first final of a major tournament since 1966, and that too at the hallowed turfs of Wembley. Sport is about karma and poetic justice. Southgate is a decent bloke, but England would choke. Southgate wasn’t able to jettison the demons of Euro 96 with a win in 2021. And that too, the old voodoo of penalties exacerbated the pangs. Southgate was stoic and gentlemanly as he swathed critiques of his players, especially standing up to virulent racist abuse for the black players in Marcus Rashford, Jaden Sancho, and Bukayo Saka, all of whom missed from the spot.

A World Cup quarter-final in 2022 and an unlikely final again at the Euros this year in 2024. The English squad meant they were one of the tournament favorites but ironically, the Three Lions were mediocre or sub-par for most of the tournament. They didn’t dazzle in the group stages, getting by with just a 1-0 win over Serbia, drawing to Denmark, and being held to a goalless draw against Slovenia.

The Three Lions almost suffered ignominy in the Round of 16 with a shock exit. Had the Slovakian defense held on for seconds longer, there would be only pain and no paeans for Southgate.

After trailing 1-0, a 95th minute equalizer by Jude Bellingham, and then an extra-time winner from English Citizen Kane got them through. Switzerland is known for its peaks, but England had a mountain to climb, trailing Switzerland, equalizing, and then winning on penalties – who is Southgate and what has he done with England?

The semi-final swayed controversially in England’s favor and a stunning goal in the dying embers of the match left the Oranje squashed and setting up the Three Lions with another date with destiny.

England faced tournament favorites Spain, and in 2023, Southgate’s former side, England’s Under-21 team won the tournament by defeating Spain in the final. But there was no encore from the senior team.

When Mikel Oyarzabal’s 86th-minute stretched leg ruffled the English net, and so for Southgate, the sun had set. As the final whistle blew, coronating the Spanish side victors, it also blew a noise that meant the curtains had come down on Gareth Southgate’s helm.

It wasn’t to be – and 2026 will now mark 60 long years of suffering, waiting, and anxiety for the Barmy Army and English football.

Southgate’s legacy will be remembered as the “almost manager”. He is the juxtaposition of a low-profile who achieved high-profile success, punching above his weight and boldly taking England where no English manager has gone before- two Euro finals, and a World Cup semi-final. Southgate would toe the line, but he just couldn’t cross the finish line.

Perhaps, it’s not brazen that Gary Neville describes Southgate as the most successful manager since the legendary Sir Alf Ramsey. If you were to tell an English fan and the press in 2016, that Gareth Southgate would achieve these exploits, they would call it incredulous, but instead, it’s incredible.

Southgate’s successor has his work cut out for him – he has to win a trophy to go one ahead of Southgate. And if the Three Lions were to fall back to England’s old ways – get knocked out in the group phases or don’t qualify for tournaments, then he’d be hailed as Sir Gareth Southgate, remarkable to say sir for someone whose football career for many remains a blur.

Southgate proves one adage wrong – that good guys don’t always finish last, even if they don’t finish first.

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