Following the fallout of England’s Euro 2024 final defeat, manager Gareth Southgate announced his resignation as national team manager.
Gareth Southgate does not have a trophy to show for his tenure as England manager. He will, though, go down as one of the greatest to ever do the job.
By the time Euro 2024 came around, the environment had shifted around Gareth Southgate. Everybody knew he helped England progress as a nation. Everybody knew he took England further in knockout competitions than they’d ever been. It almost didn’t matter anymore. Winning was the expectation.
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On the one hand, this is understandable. England has a team of young global stars, the likes of which they’ve never had before. However, there is a danger of Southgate being tarred with the same brush as previous disappointing England teams.
Southgate came along at a time when British politics had become farcical. He is not the most exciting football coach, but he understood one vital thing. The England manager’s job is a stewardship.
Southgate represented England with a maturity and level-headedness that was, and still is, absent from British public life. That was a very good thing for English people to see. He showed everybody what leadership should look like.
Ultimately, he wound up chewed up and spit out by the same machine that destroys every England manager. Although this is due to the nature of the beast rather than any particular failing of Southgate’s.
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He put an end to England’s penalty hoodoo, and their knockout tournament hoodoo in general. England are a young, diverse and talente group of players who now enter international tournaments as one of the favourites, and are expected to make at least the semi finals.
He may don a waistcoat rather than a suit of armor, but Gareth Southgate has slain plenty of dragons.
