IDENTITY
England used to bumble along. Were they kicking it? Passing it? Under Southgate, they’ve finally got . . .
Aman with a plan. Gareth Southgate has given English football what it has been missing for several decades now.
a clear vision. a strategy that is not bent by fear, or whims. His wishes are consistent, his players are not on trial. Southgate knows what he wants, and deploys the personnel to implement this. It may seem a simple philosophy, but it is also a rare one.
Few recent England managers have had Southgate’s vision — or his conviction in delivering it.
Steve mcClaren favoured a back three, too. When he replaced Sven Goran Eriksson in 2006, one of his stated ambitions was to make England’s defensive formation flexible. He also determined to replace David Beckham.
neither big idea lasted very long. The first time mcClaren tried a back three, in Croatia, England lost and the players he wanted to promote instead of Beckham — aaron Lennon and Shaun Wright- Phillips — were either injured or failed to make the desired impact.
By the end of mcClaren’s first season, Beckham was back in the team, despite his impending move to major League Soccer.
England didn’t lose in Zagreb because mcClaren played three at the back. His plans were shattered by injuries, particularly to Ledley King, who was key to the strategy and dropped out on the eve of the game. also missing, Steven Gerrard, Owen Hargreaves and michael Owen.
The side was patched together, including a rare start for Scott Parker. Despite this, the game was goalless until the 61st minute when Paul Robinson, the goalkeeper, was caught in no-man’s land, allowing an easy header from Eduardo da Silva to loop over him. There followed one of those calamity goals that only happen when a team are down, with Robinson missing a kick at a bobbling ball, meaning Gary neville passed into his own net.
England didn’t look good with a back three that night — but it wasn’t the reason they were defeated.
What followed, however, demonstrates why Southgate is different. mcClaren never went with a three again. He abandoned his beliefs, unable to risk stretching the players and rattled by the heavy criticism he received over one game.
Even when England should have played three to mirror Russia in moscow later in the group, mcClaren would not chance it — and lost that night, too. The flexible three, the cornerstone of what he was meant to bring to England, became like a firework that failed to ignite. He wouldn’t go back to it, just in case.
and while Southgate has not experienced the equivalent of mcClaren’s defeat in a major qualifying game, it was less than a year ago that he was jeered as England laboured in malta.
If anything, since then, he has doubled down on his core beliefs: the back three, with Jordan Henderson as the midfield pivot. The identity of the players may have evolved — Harry maguire came in for the final group game in Lithuania, Kyle Walker was switched to a right-side centre half in a friendly against Holland in amsterdam as recently as march — but Southgate has stayed convinced that this is England’s best shape. It may have been in 2006, too — except mcClaren never gave it time to fly.
So Southgate deserves credit for that courage. It isn’t easy. Roy Hodgson ended up compromised as England manager, his starting teams in two tournaments seemingly a mish-mash of concepts — what he wanted, and what he thought was expected.
Then there were England’s foreign managers — contracted at vast expense. Sven Goran Eriksson and later Fabio Capello ended up selling limited versions of English football back to the Fa for millions.
Southgate, meanwhile, has attempted a genuine change in the way England play, demanding defenders use the ball from the back in a more sophisticated, ambitious way than Eriksson ever envisaged.
‘ I think it comes down to
identity,’ Harry Redknapp wrote of England in his autobiography. ‘We don’t have any. The last England manager I can remember who had a clear idea of what he wanted to do was Glenn Hoddle. Since then, we’ve bumbled along. Are we kicking it? Are we passing it?’
Under Southgate, now England know.
‘One of the biggest things the boss wanted when he took over was an identity for the team,’ said Henderson. ‘How we wanted to play was an open conversation from very early on. How the players wanted to play, how he wanted to play and we were on the same hymn sheet. He’s really helped bring that out of us as a team, that identity, so everyone knows their roles individually and collectively. The lads have bought into what he wants us to do.
‘I’m fortunate enough to have that at Liverpool too, under Jurgen Klopp, who is one of the best managers in the world. What he brings and what he has helped me with, I’ve tried to take that to England. And then the manager here, the way he works, I think he’s been outstanding in bringing us all together and that feeling has been huge.’
Southgate was an unused substitute when England beat Germany 5-1 on September 1, 2001, but did not share the euphoria of the nation. He thought England were very direct that night, banging the ball over the top for Michael Owen to run off the shoulder of the last defender, and having earned such incredible success feared England would be stuck in that groove for many years.
He was right. Eriksson favoured a military 4-4-2 and his ideas were incredibly limited for a group of exceptional players who should have achieved far more in tournaments. Capello was better, but still ended up selecting Kevin Davies for the odd match and encouraging his players to launch balls into the mixer if the breakthrough wasn’t coming.
English football will always have a default mechanism to go direct, but Southgate (right) has made it a virtue with attention to set-pieces. In open play, this is a different England.
Most importantly, the players know the system is not on trial. It would be very difficult for Harry Maguire or John Stones to have confidence on the ball if it was felt the back three, and maybe their places in the team, were at stake on the back of one mistake.
Even Southgate admits he thinks ‘Oh my gosh’ — his words — at some of the more aspirational carries, but he says that with an indulgent smile, because it is also what he wants. Having worked under Terry Venables, he was crushingly disappointed at the lack of ambition required from Eriksson’s defenders. Southgate’s back three will never shrivel from lack of encouragement to play. They know what they are about, and his demands.
‘Without a doubt that matters,’ Maguire confirmed. ‘ Gareth straightaway set his sights on the formation, the way that we play, the style we play.
‘He set it and he wasn’t changing it. He has great belief in the way he feels we should play and the way that’s best for us as a team to be successful in this tournament. Up to now it’s proved to have worked really well. I can’t speak highly enough of him.’
That view seems universal among his squad. Southgate is the man England’s players have needed for too long now: a man with a plan.