Shrewd Southgate deserves benefit of doubt over Sterling
England’s manager is the voice of sanity among the furore of football, writes Matt Dickinson
FROM World Cup winners to those such as David Seaman and Peter Shilton for whom glory slipped through their fingers in an England shirt, dozens of former players sat and watched an England team of vibrancy, confidence and record-breaking youth put on a show.
Happy thousandth! And it certainly was, but there must have been days recently when Gareth Southgate felt like he has been the manager for all 1000 England matches and not just the 40 that he marked on Friday (NZ time) with a 7-0 thrashing of Montenegro.
England can have that effect, even on the most balanced man to have taken on the job. ‘‘A lonely place,’’ Southgate had said, and it must have felt that way this week more than any other for him because of the furore around Raheem Sterling.
‘‘I think nobody else walks in my shoes and deals with all of those things, so whenever I pick a squad, the country’s divided. Whenever I pick a team, the country’s divided,’’ Southgate said.
That is true for any international coach, though some of us have spent the week wondering what there was to be divided over.
If there is any England manager you might back to make the right call on a disciplinary issue, it is Southgate. You might quibble with his selections, dispute formations, but give him a thorny off-field problem around a national team that loves to diminish even distinguished reputations – yes, that was Fabio Capello up in the stands at Wembley – while talking of an Impossible Job, a toxic tracksuit, a poisoned chalice, and Southgate is a voice of sanity, the grown-up in a room.
Some old pros – it was Roy Keane’s turn on ITV last night (Thursday) – would have you believe that incidents like Sterling launching himself at Joe Gomez in the team canteen happen all the time. I am really not sure they do (the fact that Keane could specifically remember brawling with Peter
Schmeichel at 4am in a hotel lobby suggested it was unusual, even for him) and, just because they sometimes take place does not mean they should be tolerated.
‘‘When I hear about the PR side and the players having to apologise to the group, I don’t get that side of it,’’ Keane said. But then maybe if he had got that side, he would not have been sent home from a World Cup or kicked out of Manchester United after so much distinguished service.
There will be tensions, but grappling with a team-mate who has offered a handshake seems exactly the sort of issue that requires firm leadership, especially in an international camp with such an onus on disparate groups to pull together.
How many times has Southgate reinforced the point that there is nothing more important than a squad ethos. His stance in omitting Sterling was all the more powerful for being a star name but this did not seem to be embarrassing a key player for his own empowerment.
Sterling has been allowed his own say on social media, not dragged in front of the cameras to read out a prepared statement like Glenn Hoddle required from Teddy Sheringham after the forward was caught having a latenight cigarette and drink in Portugal on a weekend off nine days before the 1998 World Cup.
There have been some bizarre criticisms this week. Keep it in house? Good luck with that. Of course we can wonder whether Southgate would have taken the same stance if this had been a critical test against France but we can only judge the manager on his actions this week. As Sir Geoff Hurst made his way into the 1000th game celebrations, he offered his endorsement.
‘‘I have spoken to a couple of players after games and they are very complimentary about Gareth without being prompted,’’ he said. ‘‘At the top of any sport or team or business, you need a leader. We had one [in Sir Alf Ramsey in 1966]. They have got one.’’
The Sterling issue dealt with – and this really was not a game when he was likely to be missed – there is, of course, plenty that Southgate still has to work on.
To be a team that can challenge for a first trophy since 1966 – and sadly only Hurst and George Cohen of the world champions could make it to Wembley with several others too frail to travel – the manager knows that he needs to work on midfield options.
Harry Winks merits being tested as the deepest-lying midfielder in sterner games than this, while James Maddison came off the bench for his debut to increase competition in attacking midfield, an area of flux.
Thanks to this victory, England can look forward to a confirmed Euro 2020 place which will bring all three group games to Wembley and a potential return for the semi-final and final. Well, we can hope. There is a long way to travel but when we consider the low expectations when Southgate arrived, the mess he inherited and all that has been done to restore confidence, pride and enjoyment in watching the national team, he might think he has earned the benefit of the doubt over Sterling.
‘‘If you’re a leader and you try to keep everybody happy all the time, then that’s not going to happen,’’ he said. But, thus far, he has surely made more of the country happier than can ever have been imagined when he took the job.
THE TIMES
‘‘I think nobody else walks in my shoes . . . Whenever I pick a team, the country’s divided.’’ Gareth Southgate
Aformer team-mate of Colin Kaepernick says the NFL’s arrangement of a private workout for the controversial quarterback ‘‘feels like a PR stunt’’, and given the reporting on it that subsequently emerged, it appeared he had some reason to hold that opinion.
At the very least, there was much that seemed odd about the whole thing, starting with the fact that the NFL was behind it in the first place. As noted by Eric Reid, a Carolina Panthers safety who played with Kaepernick on the San Francisco 49ers and is his closest ally in the league, if teams want to talk to a free agent and evaluate his skills, they usually just bring that player to their respective facilities.
‘‘I saw there was a report other teams were interested in Colin but they reached out to the league about it. That’s strange,’’ Reid told reporters (via ESPN). ‘‘They don’t call the league.’’
‘‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’’ he added of the workout for Kaepernick, who has been unable to find a team since parting ways with the 49ers in March 2017. ‘‘At this point, it feels like a PR stunt.’’
The NFL invited all 32 of its teams to the workout, which will be held today (NZ time) at the Atlanta Falcons’ training centre and will be closed to the public and the media. It’s unclear how many teams will send representatives – at least a few indicated that they will attend – but the unusual arrangement invited speculation that it was designed to shield individual teams from revealing that they have a legitimate interest in at least kicking the tyres on Kaepernick.
The 32-year-old quarterback has been a polarising figure since 2016, when he became the first player to protest racial injustice by refusing to stand during pregame renditions of the national anthem. It has struck more than a few observers as hardly coincidental that 2016 was also his final season in the league, even as NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has insisted that teams would have signed Kaepernick if they felt he could help them win.
Belying that stated position has been the parade of other free agent quarterbacks, most with much less impressive resumes than Kaepernick, getting signed since 2017. That helped create an impression that teams feared a backlash from the segment of NFL fans and others outraged over what they saw as his disrespect to the U.S. flag and to the military.
Today’s workout could reasonably be seen as a way for certain teams to explore a Kaepernick signing without taking a public-relations hit from those opposed to his protests, while also giving the NFL a chance to show critics that it is not intent on ostracising him at all costs.
Some of that cost was borne in a February settlement with Kaepernick, for an undisclosed amount, after he filed a grievance accusing team owners of colluding to punish him for his activism. Reid, who was among the first to join Kaepernick in his protests and himself went unsigned for several months and was part of that grievance settlement, pointed out that a rash of quarterback injuries this season have forced teams to give starts to a number of backup-quality players, while ‘‘Colin has never gotten a chance’’.
If the workout leads to Kaepernick actually getting signed, then it will prove to have been more than a public-relations gimmick, and ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith predicted that exact outcome. Smith said on ‘‘First Take’’ that he was ‘‘told’’ Kaepernick would have to ‘‘throw the ball into the stands’’ or ‘‘run his mouth incessantly’’ for him ‘‘not to have a job in the NFL within the next week or two.’’
ESPN’s Dan Graziano reported that ‘‘several teams have been in contact with the league office to ask about Kaepernick’s status’’ and that ‘‘the league has grown tired of telling teams they’re free to find out for themselves’’.
However, if the NFL is sincere about helping Kaepernick return to the fold, it doesn’t appear to be putting him in the best position to succeed. Just as the world learned Tuesday that Kaepernick’s workout would take place today, so did the quarterback himself, giving him just a few days to prepare for possibly his only shot at performing in front of personnel evaluators from multiple teams.
Apparently, NFL franchises were similarly caught off-guard.
In addition, The Ringer reported, Kaepernick was given just two hours on Tuesday to decide whether he wanted to accept the offer, and when the quarterback’s camp asked whether the workout could be moved to the following Tuesday or Saturday, the league maintained it had to be today.
Making his preparation trickier, according to Yahoo Sports, was that as of Wednesday night the NFL had not provided Kaepernick a ‘‘defined throwing script’’ or any indication of who would be on the other end of his passes. The website joined others in reporting that whereas the league had given Kaepernick’s camp an expectation of receiving a list of attendees, it then declined to do so.
One thing seems certain: Because the tryout is on a Saturday during the season, most of the NFL’s personnel chiefs – head coaches, general managers and other front-office executives – won’t have a chance to attend, as they’ll be with their teams on the eve of game day.
The NFL claimed ‘‘area scouts’’ could attend. Kaepernick’s workout and an interview would be recorded and would be made available to teams
Still, the league’s arrangements had Reid expressing scepticism.
‘‘It’s disingenuous,’’ he said. ‘‘They want the appearance of giving Colin a chance, but they give him two hours’ notice and tell him it has to be on a Saturday when they know decision-makers are travelling.
‘‘So is this real? We’ll see.’’
In a tweet this week, Kaepernick himself hinted at some concerns about the seniority of today’s attendees.
‘‘I’ve been in shape and ready for this for 3 years,’’ he said, ‘‘can’t wait to see the head coaches and GMs on Saturday.’’
The NFL scarcely waited to let everyone know it was giving Kaepernick a tryout, to judge from an account by Yahoo Sports, which reported that ‘‘a representative from the league called a select group of reporters last week and suggested they should be available on the following Tuesday for a worthwhile news development’’.
That suggests that even if the audition wasn’t arranged for purely public-relations purposes, the league was certainly not going to pass on an opportunity to milk it for some favourable coverage.
On another ESPN programme this week, former NFL player Ryan Clark said the whole thing ‘‘seems like a setup’’.
Fellow analyst and former NFL player Desmond Howard echoed Reid’s comments by calling the workout ‘‘disingenuous’’ and a ‘‘PR stunt’’.
Washington Post