Southgate on the attack and he won’t shrink from a challenge
MID-SENTENCE, Gareth Southgate must have sensed he was losing the room.
The man of the moment he might be back home in England but, here, he was playing second fiddle to news just in from Kazan.
South Korea had scored. Germany were going out of the World Cup. Just as well he hadn’t told the players to toss the game to avoid them, then. Just as well he hadn’t spent the last two days preparing to lose.
South Korea scored again. When asked, of course, he avoided any hint of schadenfreude because he is, after all, Gareth Southgate: England’s most sensible man.
Whatever happens in Kaliningrad against Belgium tonight, England have progressed to the last 16 with less fuss than Spain, Argentina, Portugal — even Brazil. So, too, have Belgium, to be fair, meaning both coaches will be giving tired legs a rest, trying the best of those beyond the starting XI, because that is the luxury of a two-game qualification.
Southgate has been bombarded with counsel this week, from sages who believe surrendering and coming second in Group G is the clever move, but winning and winning well is still a new enough feeling that England want more of it.
What kind of manager would Southgate be if he sent out an England team with instructions to get beat, or get booked if that meant sacrificing top spot on fair play? How could he tell his players not to fear, if it was quite obvious he was scared of the competition’s big hitters?
He has come here, he said, to attack the tournament. How lame would he look to shrink now?
‘We want to win the game,’ insisted Southgate. ‘That would mean we top the group and move forward. I go back to the fact we are trying to develop a winning mentality, so I can’t imagine a situation where I talk to the players about anything less. It wouldn’t sound authentic considering what we’ve been trying to build for two years.
‘We think we need to keep winning, we want to breed a mentality that everyone in our squad wants that constantly. And we’ve not won a knockout game since 2006, so why we would be starting to plot which would be the better venue for our semi-final is beyond me, really.
‘Best to focus on this match. We have no idea who, when or where we will play in the next round, but we’re building a team that everyone back home can see is passionate about England and is improving every time.’
Whatever this World Cup holds for England, barring an unprecedented, unforeseen disaster — like losing to Iceland in 2016 — the tournament has already been deemed a success by many — especially for Southgate.
He was the yes man who turned out to be anything but — the company stooge who turned out to be a radical.
‘I keep reading about expectations being high now, but I think what is high is the enjoyment,’ he continued. ‘Optimism is in there, too, but not necessarily expectation.
‘I think people are realistic this team is young in terms of experience and age. But I also feel it is possible for them to go further than anyone thinks.’
He added: ‘Look, this wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted it to go well for Roy Hodgson, I wanted it to go well for Sam Allardyce and I didn’t think when Roy left there would be any enthusiasm for an internal appointment.
‘I knew my record with Middlesbrough would be held against me — even though, for me, what I achieved with them in the first two years is better than anything I’ve done in the last couple of weeks. As a manager you’re always judged on results without the context, without the understanding of where you are.
‘But I also knew that somebody needed to step in for a couple of days and I was the best person to do that. Then I actually enjoyed it more than I thought.
‘I could see the players were hungry and humble enough to take on board the ideas we were trying to implement, so I thought it was worth having a go with them. That’s probably the biggest thing I am pleased about.
‘I remember Chris Coleman with Wales after the Euros in 2016 saying you’ve got to go for things in life and don’t be afraid to fail. That resonated with me because I’d just ruled myself out of taking the England job.
‘Talking to young people or my own kids I would be saying exactly the same things as Chris, but I wasn’t living it. So I felt then that I had to make sure that if there was an opportunity, I would go for it.’
Whether Southgate imagined becoming fashionable, from his tactics to his touchline attire — he could do for waistcoats what Peaky Blinders did for penny-collar shirts — is another matter, but it is plain this is no summer holiday infatuation on the public’s part.
We think we need to keep winning. We want to breed that mentality