I am not afraid to manage England, says Southgate
Cultured defender allowed to take risks others denied We want bravery but not stupidity, says manager
Gareth Southgate has said that the England job holds “no fears” for him as he prepares to be appointed the 15th permanent candidate in that role following a decisive 3-0 victory in the pivotal World Cup qualifier against Scotland on Friday night.
The 46-year-old is expected to signal formally his intention that he wants the job long-term when he meets with Football Association technical director Dan Ashworth following Tuesday’s Wembley friendly against Spain. Southgate said that he was unsure whether the process the FA is commit- ted to following will involve him having an interview at an organisation that he has worked at for the majority of the last six years.
reported last week that candidates with an interest in the England job were being told to prepare for disappointment with the selection committee of Ashworth, FA chairman Greg Clarke, FA chief executive Martin Glenn and adviser Howard Wilkinson determined to award the role to Southgate barring a disaster against Scotland.
Southgate said: “There are no fears with the job. It would be easy to look at the negatives but to work with top players and in big matches is what I want to do.” Asked why he had not been explicit about saying he wanted the job, Southgate said: “I’ve avoided answer- ing that because I don’t think it is necessary. I think you just have to do the job. I’ve seen people in this position before talk about how much they want the job and it becomes an irrelevance if you don’t prepare the team well.
“It is not really my decision but I’ve loved doing it and I’ve seen some signs of progress with how we’ve played and from my point of view it has been a brilliant experience whatever.”
There have been few phenomena in modern English football quite like the rise of John Stones, a talented young defender whose status as the nation’s cultured, ball-playing centre-back-inwaiting means he has a licence to play the game his way that not many others enjoy.
It was once the mercurial forwards and attacking players who were permitted to improvise in pursuit of wherever their brilliance took them, but these days the game has changed to the extent that it is also certain centrehalves who now do it. So it was that an hour or so after arguably his most important victory as a manager, Gareth Southgate was talking at Wembley on Friday night about what the future holds for young Stones, this risk-taker extraordinaire.
It had been another memorable game for the 22-year-old, whose determination never to take the easy option, but instead to play out assiduously from the back, rarely wavered.
At times he seemed to be tap-dancing on the brink of catastrophe, and then there were also moments, when he clipped a 40-yard ball on to the toes of a team-mate, when it made sense.
“For years we have talked about not being able to play out from the back, and if we are going to progress we have to be different and encourage players,” Southgate said, a look in his eyes that suggested he was replaying the best and the worst of another evening of classic Stonesian defending. “But,” he added, “he [Stones] also knows what I think of some of the things he did.”
There, in a nutshell, is the great conflict at the heart of the Stones story. No one wants to be the kind of football country that fails to nurture rare and unpredictable talent and wakes up in 10 years’ time asking what became of that promising young boy from Barnsley with the permanently startled expression. Yet on the other hand, could he not just save us all the anxiety and sometimes put his foot through it?
“I think what we have to remember is that he [Stones] is 22, and in central defensive terms that is nothing,” Southgate said. “If we want a [Mats] Hummels, a [Jerôme] Boateng and a [Gerard] Piqué … I can remember managing a team against Piqué when he was 22 and he played for Manchester United. He wasn’t the all-round real deal. I think he [Stones] has got the perfect manager to work with and to hone. For all of our defenders that is what we want to encourage.”
Those three are, of course, three of the greatest defenders of the modern age. All are World Cup winners, they have 13 top-flight league titles and five Champions League titles between them. This is exalted company for Stones to find himself in, but why not aim for the very top? Piqué and Boateng are both former Pep Guardiola players, and it should be said that all of them have endured occasions when they have looked vulnerable because of the way that they play.
Stones has picked the right era to be a defender who plays out from the back – and there has never been a more devout proponent than Guardiola, his
club manager who will forgive just about anything in the name of creativity. Watching Stones on Friday night you could have been forgiven for thinking that he was still playing according to the Guardiola principles, while Southgate said he wanted his players to be more selective about when they passed out from defence. “I believe we have the technical ability,” he said. “I think it is decisionmaking and positioning sometimes, recognition on when to really commit to it and when to play past the first press [i.e. go long]. We want bravery but not stupidity at times. We have to find that balance.” He added: “Anyone who has seen the under-21s play knows what we believe is the right way to go forward. And I wanted us to be an England team [against Scotland] that played with confidence and was prepared to use the ball even though it was a very intense and difficult atmosphere.”
For Southgate the high-stakes part is over, and with the manager’s job all but assured in the long-term, England can afford to be more relaxed on Tuesday against Spain, who happen to be without Piqué, one of a number of key players who are injured, including Andrés Iniesta, Sergio Ramos and Diego Costa. Southgate said he was sure that Spain would press his team high up the pitch, and it is a different matter when it is David Silva rather than Leigh Griffiths snapping around your heels.
Southgate hinted at some frank words with Stones at half-time, and it was notable that the defender’s former Everton team-mate, and fellow centre-back, Phil Jagielka, came out on to the pitch with him before the second half, deep in conversation. Gary Cahill, Stones’ defensive partner, had a wobbly moment of his own, too, although that was less to do with trying to pass the ball and more a mistake which obliged him to take a booking.
Cahill is temperamentally less inclined to take risks in possession and more likely to take the simple route out. Stones contrasts with the Chelsea man’s long-standing defensive partners over the years but naturally Cahill defended his team-mate in the aftermath of the game. He says that Stones has the capacity to improve and make better decisions.
Cahill was three months short of his 25th birthday when he earned his first England cap. Stones was 22 in May and has 14 already.
“The potential is there for him [Stones] to do whatever he wants to do,” Cahill said. “He’s a great lad off the pitch, personality wise – you have to look at that as well. Is he a boy who is going to take on advice from people? Is he going to listen to everybody and soak that up? He certainly is. There’s no reason he can’t go on and have the career he wants to have.
“He is a different type of player, but I think everyone is aware of his ability. Along with that ability is the attitude to listen and take on board things from people who have done more than you. That’s how I progressed and I’m sure he’ll be the same.” What about this determination to play out from the back?
“When the time’s right, I think,” Cahill said. “When the time’s right to play out from the back we’ll play out from the back. I think that’s something maybe we can look at. You don’t have to be fixated with one style or another.”
He did say also that the passing-fromthe-back approach was “the way the manager wants us to go”, so one suspects that Stones only believed he was carrying out orders, although perhaps his manager did not expect him to do so quite so diligently. Either way, you get the feeling there will be more of this against Spain on Tuesday night, and having seen the footage of Friday’s game, their manager Julen Lopetegui will be ready.
If Stones is in the mood again to show Spain that he is the next Piqué-inwaiting it certainly will not be a dull occasion, although whether it will be comfortable viewing is quite another matter.