Jurgen Klopp to manage England as Gareth Southgate quits? It's not as simple as that...
That’s what I expect to read in the chat forums, on social media and perhaps in one or two tabloid outlets that should know better, and, as an England fan of some two-score years I can understand the frustration. The knee-jerk instinct to find the reason we cannot get over the winning line and to quickly blame Gareth Southgate.
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Hide AdThirty four years ago, sitting on my parents’ living room floor, as a boy that had no internet, no devices, no distractions, football was my everything, I cried until I fell asleep when the Germans dived their way to victory over England and Paul Gascoigne. I was utterly crestfallen in a way I can’t describe. When Luciano Pavarotti’s Nessun Dorma whispers its opening sweet nothings with my ears, honestly, if the moment is right it can bring me to my knees and that devastation, that disappointment and all of those emotions I’ve carried around with me ever since.
If you’re not me, or one of those like me, you’ll perhaps think I’m being hysterical for the sake of some cheap copy for newsprint. But I can assure you that I’m not alone in feeling this way, though I think your age and circumstances had to sync with the Italia ‘90 event in order for your being to be implanted with this lifelong trauma that won’t go away.
But, you know, I am now a dad to a ten-year-old and whilst I saw him clearly entertained and interested in the England v Spain final last night, I didn’t see him enthralled and invested in the same way that we were in 1990. Back then, the players were once bricklayers and electricians, they drove Rovers and Ford Granadas (Ghias, of course!) and they drank beer and ate fish and chips on a Friday night.
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Hide AdIn other words, they were just like us and we were just like them, and they were our heroes because of that. And because they were just like us, that meant to ten-year-old kids that one day we could be just like them, too, and that was inspiring. It was uplifting and it was motivating. We left for primary school early so that we could play football in the playground. We ran home from school like athletes in order to wolf down our Findus tea and get on the park for a kickabout. We re-enacted pieces of commentary that I still have word-for-word now, as we jinked and turned our way through on makeshift goals, slotting a tatty Mitre Delta between bobbly, holed jumpers laid on the grass.
So there is little wonder that when we got so close and our then boy-wonder, Gazza, was ruled out of the final come what may, that children like me were brought to tears. Nessun dorma. Nessun dorma. None shall sleep. None shall sleep. I didn’t. I couldn’t.
And here we are again. Only now, no England player could build you a house nor give it a re-wire. They drive Ferraris and they live in mansion houses. Modern footballers aren’t plucked from the grassroots, they’re designed and engineered in academies. We can’t touch them, we can’t be them, we can’t relate to them. They’re movie stars kept in glass cabinets.
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Hide AdNone shall sleep, none shall sleep. Not even you, oh princess. In your cold bedroom, watching the stars that tremble with love and with hope.
Love. And hope. Lyrics from Nessun dorma but once the essence of football, an essence that has been stolen from us by money, by systems and strategies and by corporate greed. Quarantined away from the humble fan, made a freakshow by the money men of television … and I still love it.
I love it because it’s, well, better. I love it because it is no longer 11 strong men kicking the hell out of each other. It’s now 11 Lionesses finessing their way to victory. It’s 11 boys - Spain’s Lamine Yamal was 16-years-old when Euro ‘24 started - and men on the same field of play, there because the rules of the modern game protect children from meat-headed men so that skills and merit trump muscle. It isn’t ‘a man’s game’ as the dinosaurs will tell you. It’s the people’s game and I’ll tell you something for sure, we have Gareth Southgate to thank for at least some of that.
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Hide AdSince he took the helm in 2016, he has dismantled the barriers between his players and the press. Open training sessions, honest media conferences, frank exchanges. He has flirted with more success than any England manager ever, yet those flirtations of his have not led to a relationship with winning.
And so the questions as to why will reverberate around tap rooms and living rooms just as they will the FA board room: is Gareth Southgate the man to take England to glory?
I’ll level with you, I don’t know. I’m no closer to being an elite football coach than I am an astronaut. I’m not even a proper England fan; I’ve only seen an England side play inside a stadium once, so I can only consider myself an armchair expert. So, should Gareth step aside? The only manager in football history to have lost two Euros finals. A man who has transformed the England set up from in-crowd cliques to collective camaraderie. A man who repeatedly gets us to the brink of euphoria, whose compassion, intellect, humour and humility guide his decision-making? A manager who seems to be an analyst away from glory; a nutritionist away from victory; a psychologist, coach and strategist away from invincibility.
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Hide AdWell, I don’t think so. Those who scream ‘get Jurgen Klopp’; ‘get Pep Guardiola’ as far as I’m concerned don’t understand international football. It is one thing to nurture an intense style of play amongst a group of players whose lives you control from top to bottom every single day and quite another to galvanise individuals, whose day jobs make them mortal enemies, and create an elite, winning unit.
Yet Gareth Southgate, Steve Holland, his assistant manager, and the team they have assembled came closer than Italy, Germany, Portugal or France. In 2020, they came closer than Spain. So, again, should Gareth Southgate go?
Quite frankly, no, and even when he does it must be his and his decision alone. He has earned the right and the privilege to be in control of his departure, and when he does decide the time is right, we will all owe Gareth Southgate a debt of thanks.
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