So farewell, Gareth.
After nearly 8 years, 102 games, 2 European finals and a World Cup run in 2018 that brought the country together, Gareth Southgate has today announced that he will step down from his role as England manager.
As fans, it seems our collective response is to shuffle our feet, look to the floor and mutter something like ‘probably for the best’.
There will be those who will give him the send off that he deserves, the plaudits, the gratitude for the songs and the memories and the waist coat sales.
But many, and I include myself in this, have come to resent Southgate, to see him as a source of boredom and frustration, someone who has served us up the same stale, frustrating football and who I now see as someone who has, in some ways, actually under-achieved.
But as I reflect, I know that, even if I’m right on that (and there’s plenty who’ll disagree) – I’m guilty of thinking of Southgate in purely sporting terms.
And that does him a disservice – his biggest impact was off the pitch, and that is where his legacy will be realised, too.
Because when you look at what Southgate has given the country, and the circumstances within which he has done so, perhaps he has achieved much more than any of us appreciate.
Let’s think back to the context of his appointment, on and off the field.
He replaced Sam Allardyce, a popular figure who resigned after just one match in charge after he told undercover journalists that he would advise them on how to circumnavigate FA rules.
That followed one of England’s worst tournament results in recent history, exiting Euro 2016 after a 2-1 defeat to Iceland, a tepid display that former striker and pundit Alan Shearer described as ‘the worst performance I have ever seen from an England team. Ever’.
The team, and indeed the country, was a mess.
Southgate took the job permanently in late November, weeks after Donald Trump was made president of the United States of America and with the UK still reeling from the narrow vote in favour of Brexit.
Populism was rising, the country was divided, Farage and his lying bus were dancing a victory dance and little did we know we could be reunified by a modest man from Watford who spoke softly and almost looked a bit embarrassed to be there.
The tournament that followed in 2018 was perhaps the highlight of Southgate’s England career.
Comfortable in the role, Southgate was brave.
He breathed life into the team by adding young talents like Marcus Rashford and Trent Alexander Arnold, and brought a happy, inclusive atmosphere to supporting England that I felt like I’d never seen before.
In the long hot summer of 2018, we adapted Atomic Kittens songs, donned our waistcoats, and fully got behind a team who gave the country what it needed – joy. And it wasn’t just the fans smiling, the players did too.
Players reported a good atmosphere inside ‘club England’, while Raheem Sterling wrote directly to the fans, after years of being derided by parts of the media. It felt like a bond had been built between England players and fans that hadn’t existed for a generation.
England exited to a strong Croatian team in the semi finals but the love and excitement for the team stayed as we looked ahead to co-hosting the Euros two years later.
Of course, that was delayed by Covid. A nation already struggling were now isolated, unable to work, and locked away until summer 2021, when a delayed but still inexplicably named Euro 2021 tournament finally took place, with many of the games being played in the gradually expanding stands of Wembley stadium.
With some pandemic protocols still in place, outdoor viewing of the games became standard, with box parks and fan zones becoming the place to be, and despite the fact that only limited numbers were able to attend games, this felt like the release that people needed, the outlet that fans required after the horror of lockdown.
Southgate, again, gave us something to sing about, to cheer.
That tournament ended in the cruellest possible way, with England’s youngest players failing to convert penalties. Disgusting scenes followed as the players who missed, Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bakayo Saka, received racist abuse online.
Again, it’s hard to imagine a better man to guide us through those moments than Gareth Southgate. A man who missed a penalty himself in 1996 as England exited that tournament to Germany, he put his arms around those players, literally and figuratively, in an attempt to protect them from everything outside.
Since then, chaos has reigned but Gareth has remained a constant, even if it feels like we’ve had more prime ministers than we’ve had England games. The economy is in the bin, people’s mortgages have doubled, and football has, again, become an important release for a frustrated nation.
Of course, this most recent, and as it turns out, final tournaments, were a mixed bag.
The crop of players that he brought into the England squad, many of whom he coached at youth level, are achieving such great things for their clubs that, when England exited Qatar in 2022, and now Sunday’s final to Spain, many point to his tactics and coaching as the reason we fell short.
But in truth, it’s only down to Gareth that we expect so much. And more importantly than that, it’s only down to Gareth that we expect to enjoy England so much.
His reign as England manager gave us finals, gave us songs, gave us pints flying through the air, singalongs and hugging strangers, as we dared to dream.
Perhaps he was never the manager we really wanted, but perhaps he was the manager England needed.
By the end of his reign we wanted trophies, but deep down what we needed was joy, an escape, a reason to be cheerful.
And when the country needed it the most, Southgate delivered it.
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