Gareth Southgate is surely too sensible to stay on as England manager and risk hostility eclipsing the good will he has built up over the last eight years.
England rugby fans had 2003, while cricket followers got the 2005 Ashes and the 2019 World Cup. In tennis we’ve seen a British man win Wimbledon twice – as well as the Davis Cup – in the last decade or so.
Golf fans have enjoyed multiple Brits winning the Open Championship since the turn of the century, while Formula 1 has been littered with English title winners. London 2012 had Super Saturday and the Lionesses created their moment in 2022.
But for supporters of the England men’s football team born after 1966, the wait for a watershed moment of triumph goes on following a second successive European Championship final defeat on Sunday night in Berlin.
Gareth Southgate has led the Three Lions to within touching distance of that elusive silverware, first at Euro 2020 and then again this month at Euro 2024. On top of that England reached their first World Cup semi-final since ‘66 at Russia 2018 and the last eight at Qatar 2022.
As debate rages over whether he should stay on or step down, those major tournament performances shouldn’t be taken for granted. He has delivered repeatedly where more celebrated managers have failed. Southgate has made success a realistic target rather than just an expectation born of lazy entitlement.
He will bear the brunt of the criticism for England failing to get over the line again. He has always preferred to take the flak and protects his players. But history will look more kindly on Southgate’s era and if this is where it ends he deserves to bow out with enormous respect for both his achievements and the dignity with which he has operated.
We shouldn’t sugar-coat England’s Euro 2024 campaign, however. The team arrived without a settled midfield, took an injured left-back without specialist cover and never solved the puzzle of how to coax the best out of Phil Foden, Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane at the same time.
Southgate did show hitherto unseen levels of tactical flexibility by switching to a three-man defence for the quarter-final and semi-final, and using his substitutes to change games. But England scraped their way to the final and it would have been a travesty of justice – for neutrals at least – if they had overcome a thrilling Spain side.
The England manager admitted on the eve of the tournament that he would probably have to quit if he didn’t win Euro 2024: “I’ve been here for almost eight years now and we’ve come close. So, I know that you can’t keep standing in front of the public and saying ‘please do a little more’, because at some point people will lose faith in your message.”
In truth, that faith has been eroding since England lost that 2018 World Cup semi-final against Croatia. A home final at Euro 2020 took another chunk, and it crumbled a little more at the last World Cup. In Germany it was writ large when some fans threw plastic glasses of beer towards Southgate after one game.
He was taken aback by what he called the “strange situation” of facing such toxicity even when progressing in the tournament. In some ways he is a victim of his own success; the bar has been raised and it is largely his doing. Whether you are pro- or anti-Southgate has become just another aspect of the culture wars.
But that beer-throwing is in all likelihood the tip of the iceberg if he stays on and England do anything other than blow opponents away. Draw the opening match of the next World Cup and the boos will be far louder. The longer he stays, the higher the stakes, the bigger the risk it becomes more toxic. Southgate is surely too sensible for that.