I’m utterly speechless
Southgate won’t need Winston’s words to inspire
IN one of his more memorable utterances as a player, Gareth Southgate apparently claimed when England needed Winston Churchill they got Iain Duncan-Smith.
It was half-time in Shizuoka, June 21, 2002, and Rivaldo had just cancelled out Michael Owen’s strike in the quarterfinal clash with Brazil.
Southgate, an unused sub, sat looking towards Sven Goran Eriksson, waiting for a rallying call-to-arms.
It never came and the rest, as they say, is history.
Yet nor will it come in the final moments before this England team goes blinking in to the lights of the Volgograd Arena to begin their World Cup challenge tonight.
Southgate is a proud patriot but there will be no chest- BY ANDY DUNN in Volgograd beating, tub-thumping and no Churchill.
Southgate is convinced his players could not be more ready – and he is not going to mess with their heads.
He said: “I’m conscious that when I was a player there were moments before the game when I thought ‘all the manager can do now is **** it up for me and put me off my game’.
“I was ready and didn’t want to hear too much more.
“And these boys are ready. There will be key messages but it’ll just be about transferring what they are doing every day because that level they are playing at every day is high and getting better all the time.
“They won’t need to step it up tomorrow from what they have been doing in training because that level they have been hitting is high.”
The talk about “key messages” is typical Southgate, a flag-bearer for the methods of the FA’s coaching work at St George’s Park.
But, as he stands singing the national anthem ahead of the Group G meeting with Tunisia
in south-west Russia, he will be a nation’s flag-bearer.
Southgate said: “It will be a very proud moment. My family are incredibly patriotic.
“My grandad was a marine. I’ve always been brought up with England being a core part of what we stood for and my life.
“To have played for England in major tournaments and now managing England at a World Cup is a huge honour.
“I will enjoy the experience because I know too many things I did in the past I didn’t take in.
“But my focus can’t be that I’m a tourist and I’m chuffed to be here.
“I’ll be able to take those things in and focus on the job because I’m more experienced. It’s another game of football and we have to prepare them that way.”
Which, in a literal sense, might be true but Southgate knows a World Cup will throw up situations that player and coach have not had to deal with in the past.
Southgate, certainly not wanting for self-assurance, is confident he will not freeze like previous England managers have appeared to do. He said: “After about 35 years in football you draw on all the experiences from playing, coaching and life and I don’t think anything I can face in the next few weeks can be any more difficult than what I have faced in my life already.
“My job is to create an environment for the players where they are able to express themselves and feel the confidence we have in them.”
While Southgate would never say otherwise you can sense that confidence is genuine and high.
And he will not need a Churchill routine to tell his players that.
My focus can’t be that I’m a tourist and I’m chuffed to be here GARETH SOUTHGATE