FA defends deal as Southgate could double his money
And assistant agree contracts until the end of 2024 says potential £6m salary depends on results
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The Football Association has insisted Gareth Southgate is not receiving an increased basic salary under his new three-year contract.
The extension, which takes him and assistant Steve Holland up until the end of 2024, could nevertheless mean the England manager earns close to £6million a year, double his current deal.
However, FA chief executive Mark Bullingham, who put the “template” together, insisted it was a “performance-related contract” and any rises “are self-funded by either increases in commercial revenue or tournament prize money”.
In announcing the deal – which The Daily Telegraph revealed this month – Bullingham added that “both Gareth and Steve understand that and wanted it that way”.
The FA knows it would have otherwise come in for criticism, having undergone severe cutbacks last year, during the Covid-19 crisis, with 124 redundancies (15 per cent of its workforce) and projected losses of £300million for the notfor-profit organisation. The FA also took out a £175million taxpayerbacked loan, while England earned around £21million in prize money for reaching the Euro 2020 final.
“Within the FA, I am very conscious of what we have been through as an organisation,” Southgate, who took a temporary 30 per cent pay cut last year, said. “I am very conscious that we fund grassroots football and so whatever we have earned over the period of time, it would have been right to have to prove ourselves.
“Now we have Wembley full more regularly and the prize money for reaching the latter stages of tournaments. We want to make sure that when we are sitting listening to our chief financial officer telling us where we are, that we have more than played our part in keeping the business side in the right place.
“That is a consequence of performances and results, and bringing enjoyment to the country as well.”
The contract takes Southgate beyond Euro 2024 to the end of the year. Bullingham explained that was the idea of FA technical director John Mcdermott, so there is a “period of reflection after the tournament” in Germany that summer, which will avoid the need to rush into another new deal. Even so, there is still a break clause, which can be activated by either party, after the Euros.
Southgate said he had shown no interest in managerial vacancies in the Premier League with Tottenham Hotspur, Aston Villa and Norwich City because he had already agreed terms on his new deal and was fully committed to England. Asked whether he would one day return to club management, he added, in reference to his perceived failure in charge of Middlesbrough: “There is the obvious challenge because people view my club management purely through the eyes of a relegation; there is the obvious part of you that wants to prove people wrong. There will be a day when I do that.”
For now – and the next three years – Southgate is fully focused on England winning their first major trophy since the World Cup in 1966. “We’ve only ever won one World Cup, and we still have the belief that that’s possible,” he said. “It’s an aim
we should have as a team and to step away at a moment where we still think the next few years can be very exciting … I think that would have been difficult to live with.”
Having taken England to the World Cup semi-finals and then to the final of Euro 2020 means Southgate is already the country’s most successful manager in more than
half a century. He believes England are realistic challengers to win the World Cup next year. “We are allowed to dream, and we have set ourselves high challenges,” he said.