Mr Nice Guy bares his teeth at last and England will be the better for it

GARETH SOUTHGATE has scored an A-grade in sweeping up other people’s mess in the past couple of months. Last week, he got bored of it. For once, just for once, an England manager stood up for something he believed in and left his best two young players, Phil Foden and Mason Greenwood, out of a squad because t hey had violated the team culture he is trying to build and disrespected the country that was their host.

There was more. For once, an England manager listened to a Premier League boss trying to tell him how it was and instead of hiding in the corner when Jose Mourinho spouted his disingenuous claptrap about not wanting to tell England when they should play Harry Kane — while actually telling England exactly when they should play Harry Kane— Southgate came out swinging.

It was about time. Maybe it was the boredom of lockdown or maybe we just grew uneasy with the novelty of being nice about an England manager but, for the past few months, Southgate has been damned with faint praise despite leading his team into the closing stages of the most recent two tournament sin which they competed and fast-tracking England’s most exciting emerging talents into his squad.

SURE, the narrow Nations League victory in Iceland l ast month was underwhelming and the draw with Denmark in Copenhagen a few days later was more of the same but, even though they were competitive matches in name, the reality was that, because of the chaos wrought by the coronavirus, they were little more than pre-season friendlies. England got away with four points from two games in difficult circumstances.

And anyway, have we really f orgotten so quickly how f ar Southgate has brought England and the change in atmosphere and ethos he has wrought? It is only two years ago that he led his squad to the World Cup semi-finals in Russia, our best showing at a major championships for 22 years. He was lucky, apparently, because England only had to beat Colombia, who had finished top of their group, and Sweden, who had finished ahead of Germany at the top of theirs, to get to the last four.

The following summer, England under Southgate reached t he semi-finals of the Nations League. Lucky again, I guess, although I’m struggling to recall too many people saying it was a fluke when Raheem Sterling, Marcus Rashford and Kane tore Spain apart in Seville in October 2018 in the early stages of the tournament and handed them their first home defeat in a competitive fixture for 15 years. Oh, and England finished top of their Euro 2020 qualifying group, too.

So when critics say Southgate is given an easy ride, well, yeah, because he hasn’t done an awful lot wrong. And if he has been let down by players in the past few months, then he has earned the right to deal with those players in the manner that he believes is best suited to preserve the culture of openness and honesty, self-respect and unity, that he has built within the squad.

I would have restored Foden and Greenwood to the squad for the upcoming games against Wales, at Wembley on Thursday, Belgium and Denmark after they smuggled two Icelandic girls back to the team hotel following England’s win in Reykjavik, flouting quarantine rules. They’re kids and kids make stupid mistakes. They’ve served a punishment already. But I’m not going to argue with Southgate leaving them out. He is treating them like adults because, when they are on the pitch, they have to take responsibility like adults.

When people in the public eye flout coronavirus rules, they can expect to be pilloried and probably suspended from their jobs. Foden and Greenwood have only themselves to blame. They know that. And their absence opens up deserved opportunities for Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Bukayo Saka.

Maybe t he l apses t hat have started to creep in — Sterling’s brawl with Joe Gomez, Harry Maguire’s sojourn in a Mykonos prison cell and the misadventures of Foden and Greenwood — had reached the stage where Southgate’s determination to trust the players was being taken advantage of. Maybe that will change now.

And maybe a tin-pot Machiavelli like Mourinho will pause before he makes another clumsy attempt to put pressure on t he England manager to rest Kane. Southgate was absolutely right to call out the Spurs manager.

And he was right to remind Mourinho t hat, as Euro 2021 approaches, the question is more about how he keeps Kane safe for England rather than how England keeps Kane safe for him. Southgate has been accused of being too nice in the past but, when the nice guy bares his teeth, it has more effect. He was right to draw the line.