Southgate offers plenty – but he still has his work cut out with England
It was the detailed picture Gareth Southgate painted of what he has learned from the swagger and success of rugby union’s Eddie Jones which told you most about the face of his new England.
There have been times across the past five years when the talk of the national team learning from other sports has sounded less than genuine, though Southgate is certainly the most modern and receptive of
those who have occupied English football’s most challenging role.
Jones’ three training sessions per day impressed Southgate, as did the work Jones undertook on situations when “the game was in a mess; stuff in transition rather than when teams are set.” And so, too, the wider culture in rugby. Southgate liked the way Jones’ players present the opposition analysis, rather than it being fed it by the coach. The FA like the tough Australian mindset and have added several of that nationality to performance services chief Dave Reddin's staff.
Southgate’s talk of throwing off the small-minded island outlook feels modern too – a statement for the Brexit age if ever there was one – though the challenge is the same as it has always been. How to make world beaters out of players who hint of that type of international class but who are either deprived of regular first team football or cannot make the fullest commitment to England, amid the white heat of the Premier League game.
It was liberating that Southgate’s first press conference as permanent manager did not begin with too much preoccupation with the talisman of the past. He did not want to talk of Wayne Rooney – a player who had wanted the 2018 World Cup to be his swansong yet has done nothing since the ignominy of Iceland in Nice, last June, to hold such a sense of entitlement. In Rooney’s absence, though, you wonder who will carry the torch up to Russia and beyond. One by one, the so-called golden generation have slipped away and those one or two special individuals whom we expected to take up their places have simply not materialised.
Jack Wilshere has not set Bournemouth on fire. Ross Barkley’s talents glowed, faded, and are faintly beginning to flicker again, allowing Southgate to see more positives than simply the uplift in his Everton
form. He feels Barkley is in better physical condition and views the more advanced role Ronald Koeman has found for him as one which brings his “power around the penalty area. You need players who can maybe beat someone one to one and he has the strength, the power and the guile to do that.”
Then there is also Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford; another who made the English nation gasp 12 months back, though his second season has not fulfilled the promise of his first. Some physical development is required. In an ideal world, Rashford would have played far more games than Jose Mourinho has allowed him this season, though Southgate reflected that the 19-year-old has actually been given more football than the other members of England’s under-17 European Championship winning team, who are labouring.
“Joe Gomez has been unfortunate with his injury, Patrick Roberts is playing a little bit for Celtic.
No-one else in that year group is playing Premier League football,” Southgate said. “I’m looking at Tom Davies at Everton who’s doing really, really well and I know we’ve got older players that are better than Tom now that aren’t getting opportunities.”
Articulate, outward looking, intelligent and creative: Southgate brings a lot but he still has his work cut out.