Holt: Southgate made us proud again ignoring the trolls

Some celebrated when they heard the news on Tuesday morning. There is always one ship of fools and this one carried English football’s flat-earthers.

You know the type: the ones who refuse to believe eight years of the evidence of their own eyes. The ones who want Jose Mourinho to be the next England manager. Or anyone, really. Anyone but Gareth Southgate.

That ship carried the trolls and the ingrates and the people who hated Southgate because he is a decent man who had the courage to stay true to himself when he was England manager and stood for things they distrusted and feared. The more successful he was, the more they seemed to loathe him.

It carried the malcontents who emit only rancour and bitterness and who never know what they’ve got until it’s gone. It carried the dolts who thought they sounded clever when they parroted the popular inanity about how everything England achieved in the last eight years was in spite of Southgate, not because of him.

No one should be in any mood to bow to these people or to apologise in any way for what Southgate achieved. He led us to finals of major tournaments again and that’s important but there is a bigger picture than that.

He made England a team to be proud of again, not just a stagnant backwater players had to visit in international breaks, not just the losers in the interminable club versus country row. For the players and the public, he made the England team feel like home again, a home that you love, a home you want to fight for.

Whatever England go on to achieve in the next few years, if there are triumphs, they will be won on the foundations that Southgate built so painstakingly and so conscientiously.

So those who mock him could not be more wrong. Everything that England have achieved over the last eight years was because of him. Others made important contributions, of course, but it all stemmed from him. England’s recovery from ignominy, England’s resurrection as a force in the game, was Southgate’s work.

Southgate made England contenders again. He made us feel that we could be somebody on the international stage again. He stirred emotions in us no England fans had felt for nearly 60 years. He marched England right up to the Gates of Eden, close enough that we glimpsed the promised land inside.

When Luke Shaw scored after two minutes against Italy in the final of Euro 2020 at Wembley, it felt as if 55 years of yearning and hoping and praying was coming to an end and that the dam of all our frustrations and dreams was about to burst.

We felt it again in Berlin on Sunday night. Spain were the better team but when Cole Palmer equalised in the 73rd minute, for a few precious, golden minutes, the England fans in the Olympiastadion thought England were going to do it. They thought this was the moment. They thought this was when it ended.

Perhaps it is wrong to amplify the voices of his detractors but they became so many in the last three years that it served as an illustration that being England manager really is close to the impossible job.

Those of us of advancing years have measured out our lives in the shame of England’s premature exits from major tournaments and shouted and begged to be given a manager to end the misery. And then when we find one, we boo him and curse him and throw plastic beer glasses at him in a stadium in Cologne as he leads England to another final.

The facts are these: in the last four tournaments, led by Southgate, England reached two finals, a semi-final and a quarter-final. It was a golden run that most leading nations would be proud of.

In the 50 years between the 1966 World Cup and Southgate taking over as manager, England only won six knock-out games at major tournaments. In the eight years that Southgate was in charge, England won nine knock out games. Any way you slice it, Southgate was the most significant figure in the history of the England team for more than half a century.

But there is an obvious caveat. Southgate marched us up to the Gates of Eden but no one would let him in. When it came to that final obstacle, he fell short. He did not win either of the sport’s two biggest prizes, the European Championship or the World Cup. He could not end the years of hurt. ‘Southgate: You’re the One,’ was so nearly true, but not quite.

When it came to taking the final step, he could not do it. Some have pointed to a lack of dynamism in his game-management that they feel was critical in the Euro 2020 final slipping away. Southgate made some bold substitutions in Germany over the last month but there were also times when it felt, again, is if were being reactive rather than proactive.

He will sit a step below Sir Alf Ramsey in the pantheon of England’s greatest managers because Ramsey won the biggest prize of all. It is Southgate’s fate to be remembered as the pathfinder, the man who fixed England, the man who gave the FA a template on which to model the future, the man who was destined to be the man before The Man.

That is why it would be a surprise if the FA hire a foreign manager to take over. Most of all, what is needed now is continuity. If the FA want to build on the great leap forward Southgate has taken, they will appoint either Graham Potter or Lee Carsley as the next England manager.

Whoever the successor is, much of his work is already done. Southgate repaired so many of England’s insecurities and loosed so many of the bonds that were holding them back. Penalty shoot-outs, in particular, had become a source of national trauma. If a match went to penalties, it was generally assumed, England would lose.

Because of Southgate’s attention to detail, because of the analysis of data, because of the use of psychologists, because he was able to draw on his own experience of having a penalty saved at Euro 96, because the players trusted him, England started winning them again.

Context is important, too. Before Southgate, England were stuck in a death spiral. They didn’t even qualify for Euro 2008. They were dire at the 2010 World Cup and went out in the Round of 16. They lost in their first knock out game at Euro 2012. They were knocked out of the 2014 World Cup in six days. They lost to Iceland in the second round in 2016.

It felt in those years as if England’s mediocrity were a bottomless pit from which there was no escape. The loveless relationship with Fabio Capello, a once-fine manager picking up a pay cheque at the end of his career, was a symbol of a lack of direction and an absence of continuity.

Southgate dug England out of that pit. There were legitimate criticisms to be made of his caution in game-management but, in the bold way that he transformed the culture around the England side, he was a revolutionary.

The national team was a subject of ridicule when he took over. It was regarded as an embarrassment. It was seen, actually, as an inconvenient reminder that even if we could boast that England had the best league in the world, we were also-rans in the international game.

England players were regarded with scorn, too. There was a disconnect between the national team and the public. The players were regarded as aloof and disinterested. They won plaudits for their clubs and when they joined up with England, they got brickbats instead. They played with the fear of the criticism they would receive. England had become a chore.

Southgate’s leadership changed that culture. He spun it round. Before the 2018 World Cup, he authorised a Super Bowl-style media day where every single player in the squad was made available to take questions.

The players’ stories resonated with the public. It made them realise they were normal people with normal people’s worries and problems, not the spoiled little rich kids of their imaginings. It sent England into that tournament in Russia riding a wave of public support. The fear had gone. The shirt no longer felt heavy.

Everything changed. The coaching, the attention to detail devoted to planning penalty shoot-outs, more psychological support for the players. England reached the World Cup semi-finals in 2018, their best performance at a major tournament for 22 years and momentum built.

But if the results kept coming, the relationship between Southgate and England fans changed around the time of Euro 2020. When England players decided they wanted to take a knee before matches to signal their support for the fight against racism, Southgate backed them.

Some supporters were enraged. They criticised the manager for being ‘woke’. There was a feeling before Euro 2020, that a rump of disaffected, angry fans were waiting for a bad result to provide them with the opportunity to tear into Southgate.

That bad result never came. Not until the final anyway. And when three of England’s black players missed penalties in the shoot-out defeat to Italy, they were deluged with racial abuse. Southgate, of course, doubled down on his support for his players and the relationship between him and some fans remained uneasy right until the moment of his resignation on Tuesday morning.

I’m glad he’s gone. I think it was the right time. The angry voices were getting louder. And they were being encouraged by people like the BBC’s lead presenter Gary Lineker, who fed the mob with his comments about England’s performance against Denmark being ‘shit’.

Southgate needs a new challenge. It is unlikely to be as taxing as this one. In the past eight years, he has been a diplomat, a father, a tour leader, a holiday rep, a disciplinarian, a teacher, a grown-up, a colleague, a civil rights campaigner, a politician, a psychologist, and a football manager.

He has performed all of them with great distinction. History will be kind to him. And history will look back in wonder at the voices screaming ridicule from the deck of the ship of fools about one of the greatest managers England ever had.