THE TWIN LIONS OF ENGLAND VICTORIES by failure, Gareth Southgate, like legendary dignity, modesty, authority… and success
While most England managers are defined Sir Alf Ramsey before him, represents
AFTER their heroic victory over Denmark, the England team stand on the threshold of immortal sporting glory. If they defeat Italy on Sunday, they will become our first national side to win a major international tournament since 1966. That legendary World Cup triumph 55 years ago was masterminded by the cool genius of Sir Alf Ramsey, just as Gareth Southgate has been the shrewd architect of England’s historic advance to the final of the Euros.
Indeed, Southgate has emerged from these championships as by far the greatest England boss since Sir Alf, a man he closely resembles in his dignity, modesty, authority and astuteness. The careers of most England managers are bound up with failure, only alleviated by occasional flashes of transitory success. Some, like Steve McClaren and the late Graham Taylor, unfairly ended up as figures of ridicule.
Others, such as Fabio Capello, brought only disillusion after great expectations. But in contrast the two leaderships of Ramsey and Southgate are monuments to sustained achievement, reflecting their powerful characters, their talent to inspire and their tactical awareness. What is striking are the similarities between the two men, even though they had very different backgrounds.
Where Southgate was born into a middleclass Home Counties family, the son of an IBM facilities manager and a teacher, Sir Alf was brought up in poverty in a rural part of Dagenham. Ramsey’s father has been variously described as a farm labourer or a “ragand-bone man”, but there is no doubt about the deprivation the family endured.
Their home, “little more than a wooden hut” in the words of one of Alf’s childhood friends, had no running water or electricity, and the tin bath hung on an external wall. But from his earliest years,Alf was fired by a passion for football, spending hours with his brothers playing in a meadow behind the family cottage. The same fixation with the game infused the infant Gareth Southgate, who at the age of three once chased a ball with such determination that he ran into a glass door and cut his head open.
That indefatigable spirit helped Southgate to the top, as both a player and an international manager, just as the same kind of drive brought Alf to the summit of his beloved sport. Interestingly, neither man fits the traditional stereotype of the hard-nosed, loud-mouthed boss who governs his team through bullying.
On the contrary, success for both resulted from treating their players as adults. Graeme Le Saux, who played with Southgate in the 1998 World Cup and assisted in his selection as England manager in 2016, says “people have always underestimated Gareth. They see his good manners as a weakness. In fact it’s a strength”. Sir Alf, too, was unfailingly polite despite his steely interior, hardly ever losing his temper or raising his voice.
Both brought a host of other qualities to their man-management, like meticulous preparation and analysis of the opposition. In team settings, Sir Alf was a superb communicator
because he had such a colossal understanding of the game. England team doctor the late Neil Phillips told me, “He was an incredible man. His talks were unbelievable. He was brilliant at communicating what he wanted. I have worked with leading consultants and surgeons but I have never worked with someone like Alf. He could go through in great detail any incident that had occurred in the match”.
Half a century later, Southgate’s articulacy leaves a deep impression on his players, as the Wolves defender Conor Coady revealed recently about a pre-tournament discussion: “The whole talk from the gaffer was incredible. It was something we didn’t expect. It gave me goosebumps hearing him. He spoke about our own legacy and creating memories for people of this country.”
Like Sir Alf, Southgate sticks to his own vision, not easily swayed by the press or popular opinion. That toughness was highlighted by his willingness to leave out fans’ favourite Jack Grealish from the starting 11, just as in 1966 Sir Alf courted public indignation by dropping the much loved striker Jimmy
Greaves. Again like Sir Alf, Southgate has a ferocious streak of patriotism within him, as he showed in the open letter he sent to England fans before the tournament began.
“The idea of representing Queen and country has always been important to me,” he wrote. In the 1970s, Sir Alf was outraged at the very idea of sponsoring the England shirt, which he felt should be a cherished symbol of the nation he adored.
“How can they think of making money from it?” he asked one of his assistants. In fact, he was a man of extraordinary integrity
when it came to money. It is estimated that during his England career he turned down deals worth £280,000 because he felt that his position should not be exploited for gain.
Gareth Southgate mirrors that outlook. Last year he took a 30 per cent cut in his salary because of the Covid pandemic. Integrity also shines through the private lives of both men, neither of whom have ever attracted a whiff of scandal. Sir Alf was long and happily married to his wife Victoria, just as, even in our age of celebrity hype, the bond remains strong between Southgate and his wife
Alison, whom he met when she worked as a retail assistant in Croydon. They have two children, Mia and Flynn, and family life keeps the England manager grounded. “At home, I’m below the kids and the dogs in the pecking order,” he says. But such modesty comes naturally to him. Devoid of ego, he never seeks fame for its own sake.
“What I’ll be doing when I get back is disappearing as quickly as I possibly can,” he said after the last World Cup. In similar fashion, after the final whistle in 1966, Ramsey told the England players: “This is your day.
You have done this.” For both men, football was their inevitable destiny, but the path to greatness was not always easy.As an apprentice at Crystal Palace, Southgate was once told by a coach that he should give up and become a travel agent. Working as an assistant in the Dagenham Co-op and playing part-time, Ramsey attracted little interest from league clubs until he began playing in the army during the war.
There was also a sense during their playing careers of being outsiders, their ambition and demeanour setting them apart. At
Palace, Southgate was nicknamed Nord because his voice and articulacy were said to be reminiscent of the TV’s Denis Norden.
More dramatically, Alf deliberately changed his whole style of speaking as a professional, dropping his native cockney accent and replacing it with a strangulated version of received pronunciation he had learnt from the BBC. Like Southgate, Ramsey was a defender who made up for lack of pace in his ability to read the game. In both cases, their maturity was highlighted, not just in politeness, but also their quest for self-improvement and focus on tactics.
Sydney Cann, the trainer at Southampton for whom Alf played after the war, once said: “I have never known anyone with the same quickness of learning as Alf Ramsey. He was the type of player who was a manager’s dream because you could talk about a decision and he would accept it, and there it was, in his game.”
Similarly, former England manager SvenGoran Eriksson once recalled how Southgate “came to me privately and asked what he could do better to improve”. Alf won 32 England caps and Southgate 57.
BUT just as Southgate’s England career was tainted by his notorious penalty miss in the 1996 Euros against Germany – even though he handled the episode with characteristic grace – so Alf’s career involved a humiliating defeat by the USA in 1950 and, even worse, a 6-3 thrashing by Hungary at Wembley in 1953, a disaster that exposed the hopelessly outdated nature by then of England’s approach. For both men, success in international management was a form of redemption.
The parallels should not be stretched too far. Southgate is much more at ease with the press than Sir Alf was, and also happy to embrace progressive causes that would have been an anathema to his predecessor.
Moreover, Southgate failed badly as a club manager, presiding over the relegation of Middlesbrough before his sacking in 2009. On the contrary, in a near miraculous feat, Sir Alf took lowly Ipswich and made them into champions of England in just three years.
Nor did Alf ever enjoy any riches brought by his success.At the end of his term as England manager in the 1970s, his salary was just £7,200, a paltry sum even then, compared to the reported £3million Southgate earns. Even with his knighthood, Sir Alf lived with Victoria in a modest, mock-tudor home in Ipswich, whereas Southgate’s family inhabit a £3.75million 16th century manor, Swinsty Hall, in north Yorkshire. But Southgate deserves everything the game has to offer him, just as Sir Alf deserved far more. Both are giants of British sporting history. Gordon Banks, the 1966 goalkeeper, said of Sir Alf: “Some managers are tactically aware. Some excel at coaching. Others are good at motivation and man-management. Alf was superb at everything. That’s what made him so special.”
Exactly the same words could today about Gareth Southgate.