Understated homecoming underlines Southgate’s point that nothing has been achieved yet
ACCORDING to Malcolm in Macbeth, nothing defines someone like the manner of their departure. And the way Gareth Southgate’s England squad came home from the World Cup perfectly summed up the manager and his understated, modest, coherent approach. There was no parade, no welcome committee, no pictures snapped on the steps of Number 10.
Instead the England team slipped quietly and unobtrusively into Birmingham airport without fanfare, passing through arrivals barely noticed before heading back to their families for a muchdeserved private reunion.
It was perfectly done, defusing in an instant any suggestion of indulgence. Even Luka Modric would have been hard-pressed to find a hint of arrogance about the way this England team came back. In Scotland, where they have a history of public celebration before a competition has started, they will have nodded in acknowledgement. Now Roy Keane will have to find something else to sigh about.
And it was all the better given that the temptation to celebrate, to mark the growing reconnection between team and public with a huge formal welcome, was substantial.
Those of us of a certain age will remember 1990, when another England team that had come fourth in the World Cup came back to a vast crowd filling the streets of Luton, clambering up lampposts to see Paul Gascoigne drift past on an open-topped bus wearing a pair of plastic breasts.
The personal mileage he might have made out of it makes Southgate’s decision particularly admirable. Already a hero for his faultless public demeanour during the tournament he could
have sealed his place in the national conversation by turning up at Southgate tube station, its name temporarily lengthened in his honour, for a thumbs-up photo opportunity.
Or by reprising his pizza advert from 1996, this time with a positive ending. Or fetching up on the ‘Graham Norton Show’ to bask in the adulation. There are plenty who would have succumbed to the temptation, not least several of those who preceded him in the England dug out.
But Southgate is not like that. Through the undemonstrative fashion of his return, he did something far more important than milking the moment: he reinforced the message that nothing has yet been achieved. Even a light-hearted, carefree fun parade would have communicated a sense of finality he is anxious to ensure does not take hold. For him, what this World Cup represented was the start, not the end of things.
After all, he was around, a young player at Crystal Palace making his way in the game back in 1990. And he will recall that the euphoria of that parade in Luton was subsequently more than a little diluted when, never mind going one better, England failed to qualify for the next World Cup in 1994.
True, the players might well deserve some sort of acknowledgement for the pleasure they brought to the nation over the past month. But far better for that to come in the warmth of the reception they will get when they step out for their clubs in the new Premier League season. Harry Maguire, Jordan Pickford, Kieran Trippier: all of them can then be properly lauded.
But they will also know, thanks to Southgate’s assiduous stage management, that there is still a way to go. By holding back now, the manager has made it clear that if his players want to enjoy the sight of a country going collectively loopy in their honour then the only plausible way to do it is to win next time. The French players have earned the right to be at the centre of the public giddiness currently engulfing their country. After all, they won the thing. Anything else is just self-delusion. (© Daily Telegraph, London)