Hope n’ glory
LIONS HAVE NO ONE TO FEAR
THOSE blazers from the FA used to head to World Cup draws with a sick feeling in their stomachs.
It made some of them do stupid things too, like when former chairman Greg Dyke made a cut-throat gesture back in 2013 at the event in Brazil.
Having seen England drawn in a group with Italy, Uruguay and those Central American giants Costa Rica, Dyke was pictured running his index finger across his neck as then manager Roy Hodgson looked on perplexed.
Hodgson needn’t have done, because as it turns out Dyke was right to fear the worst.
Just six months later the Three Lions managed to crash out of the group stages with a game to spare, following one of the most shambolic World Cup performances on record.
It’s hard to believe less than a decade has passed since that comical moment in Manaus.
That’s because so much has changed under the supreme management of Gareth Southgate since he took charge of the national side in 2016.
Fast forward to 2022 and there was no need for current FA chief executive Mark Bullingham to sit through a World Cup draw in a cold sweat, despite being in Qatar. There was no need for him to make crude gestures suggesting that England’s fate had been sealed without a ball even being kicked.
So-called ‘groups of death’ no longer exist for the Three Lions. Instead, rival teams look to avoid us, as opposed to England looking to avoid them.
In fact, being drawn alongside England now makes it a ‘group of death’ for that particular rival, such is the transformation that Southgate has engineered with the national side. His team will be the one to be shot at after being drawn in Group B alongside Iran, USA and one from Wales, Scotland or Ukraine.
The Three Lions are now thoroughbreds who were deserving of their place in Pot 1 in Doha alongside fellow heavyweights like Brazil, France, Belgium, Spain and Argentina.
And what is even more impressive is how Southgate is not afraid to claim England can go on and win the World Cup to achieve football’s Holy Grail.
Previous bosses have been petrified of building up expectations and have let others do it, but Southgate knows he is now a victim of his own success and has little choice but to buck the status quo.
He’s just speaking the truth – and has even visualised how captain Harry Kane might look lifting the biggest trophy of all come this winter. Whatever happens between now and the end of Southgate’s reign, he will go down as one of England’s greatest ever managers.
He’s led us to a World Cup semi-final and Euros final, nurtured and developed talent, taught players how to embrace the shirt and the expectation that comes with it, and given a nation a side to be proud of again.
But perhaps his greatest achievement of all is how Southgate has changed the world’s perception of the England team.
Dyke might have made an ass of himself with such a defeatist attitude nine years ago, even if he was correct.
But back in 2013 he also predicted that he didn’t expect to see England win a World Cup until 2022.
Now that time has come, so let’s hope Dyke’s talent for being able to see into the future hasn’t deserted him.