LET’S HAVE MORE MR NICE GUY

James Brown, author of football memoir Head Height, reveals the key to Gareth Southgate’s fandom…

‘The waistcoat gives off a sort of a weddingy vibe, and girls like that.’ My ex-girlfriend, Lisa, is giving me a run-down on why all the women in her office love Gareth Southgate.

Southgate is no longer the ex-aston Villa centre-back who missed that penalty in Euro ’96. He’s Mr Nice. The man whose team have been pictured on inflatable unicorns, are in quiet, long-term relationships (Southgate himself has been married for 21 years) and briefly distracted us from a total Government breakdown. His values and demeanour now epitomise many people’s ideal man.

In any other line of work, appointing an intelligent, open-minded, smart go-getter to the key position in your business would be seen as a good thing. But the FA is so shortsighted, such an appointment only happened by default, when their chosen candidate, Sam Allardyce, was caught in a newspaper sting.

Southgate, bumped up from a very successful spell managing the Under 21s, was met with derision from the football media. He felt like an emotionally intelligent young executive, rather than the landlord at your local, which is what many deluded football fans want in the England manager. But this is essentially what has made him so popular.

‘It’s the way he cuddled that Colombian goalie,’ Lisa continues. ‘And let Fabian Delph go home for his baby’s birth.’

The waistcoat is a key style difference. Snooker players dress like this all the time, but few are applauded for it. Somehow, Southgate’s basic M&S gear has communicated both a desire to be taken seriously and an authenticity. He’s like the bookish big brother no one knew David Beckham had.

Southgate’s niceness isn’t dippy or fake. He’s the real deal. And he reflects a desire for more kindness. Twitter is full of comments along the lines of ‘if all women want a bad guy, why is my timeline full of Southgate love?’.

It was a revelation for me, when I became single last year, to discover old flames were not only pleased to hear from me, but that by being well-behaved, faithful and a good dad for a decade, I’d gone up in their estimation. Almost as if being considerate and consistent might work better than making them laugh and cry in equal measure. More Mr Nice Guy.