Southgate happy to follow Fergie’s example

Southgate is reaping the rewards of giving young guns a chance in Three Lions jersey

SIR ALEX Ferguson might seem an odd role model for an England manager. The Scot wasn’t always perceived to be the most helpful when it came to understanding that the needs of the England team might supplant those of Manchester United.

Gary Neville recalls there was once a dispute between then England manager Glenn Hoddle and Sir Alex over whether he should return to Manchester or stay with England. ‘I could hear the manager barking down the phone: “That lad’s coming home now!”’ wrote Neville in his autobiography.

‘Blood was draining from Hoddle’s face. He came off the phone and said: “Right, I’ll let you go but next time I’m not putting up with it”.’

Yet it is Sir Alex (below, right) whom Gareth Southgate invokes when considering the fact he is charged with nurturing an extraordinary generation of teenage talents in this national team. On Friday night at Wembley, England built on the progress they had made and underlined their status as one of the most feared teams in world football. Thanks to the youth, they already look better than the side that made the World Cup semi-final.

The sight of Jadon Sancho nutmegging his way down the right wing, just as he has been in the Bundesliga, demonstrated to English eyes what the Germans knew anyway: he is among the best teenage talents in the game.

To see his childhood friend, Callum Hudson-Odoi, come off the bench — still not trusted with a Premier League start by Maurizio Sarri — and inject similar verve on the left wing from the final 20 minutes was to understand the depth of talent coming through.

Maybe Manchester City’s Phil Foden will be next. Wolves Morgan Gibbs-White will feature soon.

Liverpool’s Joe Gomez will return from injury. Marcus Rashford was in Russia but only as a supplementary player. Trent Alexander-Arnold is primed to fill the right-back role if he can get past Kyle Walker. But he is already ahead of Kieran Trippier and the stars of the summer could quickly be supplanted.

That is the rich inheritance with which Southgate is entrusted as he contemplates Euro 2020, which, should they reach the Wembley final, could see England play the majority of their games at home.

Southgate feels the responsibility keenly. ‘Very much so,’ he said. ‘It comes into everything: how much we expose them to the public, how much we put them into commercial situations.

‘We’ve got to be thinking about that all of the time as it’s easy for them to enjoy these moments. And they have to enjoy these moments. But equally, there’s a good balance.

‘I always think of Sir Alex with Ryan Giggs and how he did that so well. They had sustained success because of that. So, although they’re not our players on a day-to-day basis, we have a responsibility.

‘We’re putting them on to another level and we’ve got to make sure we get the balance right for the club, but most importantly for the player.’

England’s Class of 2017, made up of the players who won the Under17 World Cup that year, may one day give the Class of ’92 a run for the money in terms of what they achieve for the national team. Of course, for such a collection of young British talent, in Giggs, Paul Scholes, David Beckham, Gary Neville, Phil Neville and Nicky Butt, to coalesce at one club in 1992 was extraordinary.

The English FA has the advantage of cherry picking. But a similar vibe of excitement and promise is building around England, not experienced since 1997, when that group of United players (excluding the current Wales manager, of course) started to break through in an England team alongside Alan Shearer, Paul Gascoigne and Tony Adams.

Ultimately, their successes would come in club football, not with England, but Southgate believes lessons can be learned. ‘We can’t have the same influence because Sir Alex could get them in the office on Monday morning and sort them out,’ said Southgate, smiling wryly at the thought of what ‘sorting them out’ might look like. ‘But we can still make sure we’re playing them at the right times and recognising the times to pull them out. And less on the pitch, I think it’s more what we expose them to off the pitch. ‘It’s about the environment and the messages we give them. It’s easy to give young people lots of sugar and they know that we are full of belief in them so we want them to feel that. But they are still learning and are going to make mistakes, none of them is perfect. But they are surrounded by some good role models and our experience of developing young players should also help.’ Southgate, however, has grasped in a way that it seems Sarri and Jose Mourinho haven’t fully yet, that the world has shifted in the past 10 years when it comes to young footballers; and probably regarding young people in general.

Even Pep Guardiola, once the champion of youth when he threw Pedro and Sergio Busquets into his first Barcelona team, appears to have grown more conservative and less averse to risk in middle age. Watching Sancho tearing up teams at this level must irk him.

Sancho’s confidence to leave City to move to Borussia Dortmund would have been unthinkable five years ago among most English academy graduates.

Hudson-Odoi’s dissatisfaction with being told to know his place and wait his turn is evident in his desire to move to Bayern Munich. Life isn’t what it was when Southgate’s generation were growing up.

‘Young people have more belief,’ said Southgate. ‘We are more encouraging of them. Bosses in all industries are less draconian. That helps youngsters to come in and have belief and be more creative.

‘Generally speaking, given a chance, they’ll surprise people.’

Southgate was lucky. Mentor and friend Alan Smith made him captain of Crystal Palace at 23. But football generally, even at Palace, was oldschool and hierarchies were revered.

‘You had to earn everything,’ recalls Southgate. ‘“Don’t get carried away, you’ve got to earn your right to play,”. Did that get the most out of us? Probably not.

‘We have a smaller pool to pick from, so you’ve got to think of bit more creatively. You can’t wait for 40, 50 league matches, but that doesn’t mean that the players aren’t of the quality to go in and do well, as we saw on Friday night.’

Still, for all the excitement of what might be, no one dares attach a moniker to this generation just yet. We’ve been there before and we know that all that glitters isn’t necessarily golden. Yet it’s a welcome change simply to hope once again. And approach Euro 2020, much of which is based in England, with expectation rather than hysteria.