One man’s ambition, decency and steel has changed English football

Southgate’s victory is to have liberated his team from a victim mentality

GARETH SOUTHGATE’S victory in Russia this summer extends beyond the glinting silver dome of the Samara Arena where his young England side left behind another staging post in their wonderfully improbable march on immortality.

His victory is that he has changed perceptions of himself and of English football. His victory is a victory over the fears and doubts that have haunted the country’s national side for a generation.

His victory goes beyond taking England to the World Cup semifinals for the first time in 28 years. His victory is to have liberated the England team from limitations which have been self-imposed for 20 years.

His victory is that English people had grown accustomed to thinking of their footballers as slaves to money’s near horizons, as men whose priorities were wrong and as resentful victims of media and public opprobrium, and those perceptions have shifted.

Southgate was a victim in the public mind once, too. The most popular images of him associated with defeat and pain.

Most vivid of all is the moment his penalty was saved in the shootout at the end of the Euro 96 semifinal against Germany, the moment Andreas Kopke dived to his right to push his spot-kick away and Southgate stood there for a second or two at the old Wembley, his head bowed.

And then there was the time when Southgate caught Roy Keane late during the 1995 FA Cup semifinal between Crystal Palace and Manchester United. When Southgate scythed through him a second time, Keane was waiting and as the man who is now England manager lay on the turf, Keane stood on him and stamped down on him hard. Southgate lay there in the foetal position, curled up on the floor in pain as Keane looked down on him with disdain.

There has always been that misconception about Southgate: lovely guy, intelligent bloke, terrific defender but not quite brutal enough for this rough trade.

And in a way, ideas of him have been mirrored by ideas of English football these past two decades. Two decades defined by being the victims: victims of penalty shoot-outs, victims of their own indiscipline, victims of their own ineptitude, victims of their own limitations and, most of all, victims of their own fears.

England have been victims for as long as many can remember. Victims at Euro 96. Victims in 1998. Paul Gascoigne, England’s best player since 1970, was a flawed genius, a vulnerable, fragile figure. The English hated themselves because they couldn’t play the way they saw others play. They were victims because they were technically inferior. They were victims because their players were scared to reveal themselves for who they were, always watchful, always circumspect, victims because they did not believe. Sven Goran Eriksson was hired because they no longer trusted an English coach to be England manager. Fabio Capello arrived from Italy and found English players who were scared to play in front of their own fans at Wembley. The England shirt lay heavy upon them, he said. He treated them like children and infantilised the English game while he was at it.

Kieron Dyer, a great talent lost to indiscipline and to injury, said he was scared to try anything inventive for England because he dreaded the groans of the fans and the words of the press. Another player told him while they were sitting on the substitutes’ bench together that he hoped he didn’t get on because he feared the wrath of the crowd.

England had some wonderful players but too often they were emasculated when they played for the national team. Too often, they froze.

England have had some fine coaches but too often the job has crushed them. It has driven them towards pragmatism. In the end, they became shadows of the managers they really were. Southgate knew what that was like.

It happened to him when manager of Middlesbrough between 2006 and 2009, fighting relegation, and he hated himself for it.

Southgate talked about that time as he sat in a small room near England’s training base in Repino, north of St Petersburg, last week. He saw it all clearly now.

‘Certainly, I compromised a lot of that when I was with Middlesbrough,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t confident enough that what I was doing was going to get results. Then going through relegation and the problems that causes is a reminder: “Hang on, there are things there I don’t truly believe in”.’

That changed Southgate. He vowed he would not fall into that trap again. The result transformed him as a manager and now it has transformed the England team.

For 20 years, English football paid lip service to the idea that it believed in itself without quite meaning it. Now there is no doubt.

They showed that again when they coasted past the Swedes. Now their players trust each other. Now they trust themselves.

At its root, that is because Southgate has approached the job with more ambition than any England manager since Terry Venables.

He had a clear vision of how to effect change and he knew it meant doing more than working at a tactics board. He had to change the culture around the team.

He has been fortunate that his time in charge has coincided with the emergence of a group of fine young players but not every manager would have trusted those players the way he has done.

Not every manager would have empowered them and taught them as he has done.

He has not been content to work short-term. He has not been content to concentrate on self-preservation. He has not been paralysed by the fear of losing his job.

He wanted to effect real change. He wanted to change the way his players thought and the way the public thought about them.

In Repino last week, he talked about ‘changing the perceptions of what English players can do, changing the mentality’. And he has done that. This England team plays the ball out from the back now. They do not surrender possession with criminal negligence. Gone are the days when Joe Hart would complete more passes than any England outfield player. Gone are the days when England players look frightened of the ball. Even when they were tiring against Colombia in extra time in Moscow last Tuesday, Jordan Pickford, John Stones, Harry Maguire and Kyle Walker refused to abandon that principle. Southgate admitted there were times when he thought ‘oh my goodness’ as he watched them do it but it was impossible not to admire their technique and their assurance. There was a time when it was thought England defenders would never be capable of that.

As for the idea that Southgate is too nice, too soft, plenty of people have pointed out how his England played the referee in the Colombia game the way more cynical sides do. Southgate is a lot more than a wholesome boy next door.

He’s smart. ‘He’s got a nasty streak, too, you know,’ said Keane a few years back. ‘He wouldn’t have stayed at the top for as long as he did without one.’

It is just a start but in the few weeks England have been at this World Cup, it has been clear that something has changed. People at home sense it, too. Southgate’s insistence on openness with the media has allowed the players to tell their stories and for the public to reconnect with them.

The idea that their players are fickle millionaires, detached from their roots, scornful of those who do not live the same gilded lives as them, has been blown away and we can see them for the ordinary people with ordinary worries that they really are. And, surprise, surprise, people like what they see. This England squad is a bunch of dedicated professionals and humble men who have fought hard to get where they are. They are people fans can be proud of.

Southgate is responsible for all of this. Forget his human decency for a minute because it takes an awful lot more than being a nice guy to do what he’s done. He came to this job with a vision and a fierce determination to make that vision real. He has pushed his reforms through with zeal.

An England team that had become an object of cynicism and apathy have captured the hearts of their country again. Whatever happens in Wednesday night’s last-four match in Moscow, part of the job has already been done. Southgate has made English football believe in itself

again.