Euro 2020 - Wilson: How 'accidental hero' Gareth Southgate has gone from strength to strength in England role

The nadir came on 27 June 2016. I’d covered Italy’s victory over Spain at the Stade de France that afternoon. I watched the first half of England’s defeat to Iceland in the media room there, then went to a nearby bar for the second half. As the mood grew heated with Brexit argument after the final whistle – the referendum had been held four days earlier – I left with two other journalists and took the train back into Paris. We ended up in a small grim bar opposite the Gare du Nord playing drinking games based around football trivia and US presidents, while a sad group of England fans sang morosely in the corner.

England didn’t seem much like bothering about then. They rarely won, were boring to watch and the discourse around them seemed endlessly tedious. Even the sense of humiliation at losing to Iceland seemed to denote an arrogance: why, really, had anybody expected better? Had they watched Iceland in the previous four years? Had they watched England in the previous 50?

At least in the 80s and 90s England tended to fail by losing in heart-rending epics. By 2016, it was 12 years since they’d left anything resembling a positive impression at a major tournament. To the three of us sinking disappointing lager that night, the idea that five years later England would be in their first major final in 55 years would have seemed laughable.

Of course one man cannot change the course of history. There were structural changes as well. The following year, England won the Under-17 and Under-20 World Cups, evidence that the overhaul in youth development begun with the introduction of the Elite Player Performance Plan in 2011 and backed up by the establishment of St George’s Park and the England DNA project three years later was bearing fruit.

But, still, it’s hard to imagine England being in this position had Sam Allardyce continued in the job to which he was appointed after those Euros. He lasted 67 days and a 1-0 win in Slovakia and was then forced to resign after the Football Association was spooked by a sting in the Telegraph that ultimately proved not much more than that Allardyce was interested in lucrative speaking engagements in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Mid-season, the FA had few options to replace him, so turned to the Under-21 manager Gareth Southgate. Nobody expected much. He was well-liked and well-respected, but his one club management job had involved taking Middlesbrough to relegation. Southgate’s reign has come to be defined by research, preparation and planning but his appointment was the result of blind luck and expediency.

But perhaps the greatest heroes are the accidental heroes, those who don’t seek the role, but find themselves having to take responsibility because there is nobody else to do it. Southgate may or may not be a good club manager – he may have taken Boro down, but he also kept them up for two seasons, and they were only a point off the top of the Championship when he was replaced by Gordon Strachan in October 2009 – but it turns out he is an excellent international manager.

The roles are very different. Club managers have to deal with transfers, day-to-day involvement with training, minute tactical adjustments. For national managers, it’s far more about creating the right atmosphere. And Southgate has done that. He is softly spoken and modest, but he is also tough. He was determined that club rivalries should not get in the way – even though that meant dropping Raheem Sterling for a game after he clashed in the canteen with Joe Gomez following a heated clash between Liverpool and Manchester City. When Phil Foden and Mason Greenwood breached Covid regulations in Iceland last year, both were banished. Both have since been recalled, but the message was clear: there is a way of behaving, and the depth of England’s squad means Southgate can afford to enforce it.

At the same time, he involves the squad in decisions. When players were racially abused in Bulgaria and Montenegro, his response was to discuss with the players what they wanted to do. From that has come the principled decision to take the knee, despite criticism from politicians and booing from some fans.

He has also changed the often-antagonistic relationship with the media, and by so doing reduced the pressure on players. The shirt these days seems to weigh less heavy. But it is more than that. Southgate is inquisitive and resourceful. Before the World Cup, he realised that focusing on set-plays could give his side an advantage. He had his side practise penalties, work with a psychologist, researched opponents – and brought just England’s second shoot-out success in seven attempts at a major tournament. None of it was complicated; it was just practical and diligent. But it brought a first semi-final since 1990.

Since when the evolution has continued. Southgate is deceptively radical. Only nine of this squad played in 2018, yet there has been no sense of revolution or a cull. He changed formation, from a back three to a back four and back again, until this year England can play in either according to circumstance. They adapt game-to-game. There is no sense of a ‘first XI’ or of pandering to celebrities. If big names or popular players need to be omitted, he leaves them out. There is a stubbornness to him, a self-confidence that allows him to ignore the clamour from without. He does his research, makes his decisions, trusts the process.

But there are no histrionics about that, no grand speeches about doing it his way. Rather Southgate is polite and modest, just as he is gracious on the touchlines. The images of his consoling Denmark’s players following similar shots of him hugging Jose Pekerman and Carlos Bacca after England’s victory over Colombia at the World Cup.

There is a dignity and decency about him. He is already the second-most successful England manager in history but, more than that, at a time when England’s place in the world is the subject of so much rancorous discussion, he is a reminder of the better part of what being English used to be.