![Gareth Southgate being interviewed at England's Blankenhain base before the Euro 2024 final](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/football/2024/07/12/TELEMMGLPICT000385359532_17208105090380_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqTjbsQ6A733wUOR8m-2ECBAI62frJNpfGplLTbSfOgAc.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Gareth Southgate interview: ‘We live in what’s been an angry country’
England manager reflects on criticism, inheriting a calm demeanour and the ‘coaching problem’ posed by early Euro 2024 performances
![Gareth Southgate being interviewed at England's Blankenhain base before the Euro 2024 final](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/football/2024/07/12/TELEMMGLPICT000385359532_17208105090380_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqTjbsQ6A733wUOR8m-2ECBAI62frJNpfGplLTbSfOgAc.jpeg?imwidth=680)
There are two images, so far, that define Gareth Southgate and England at this European Championship. There will undoubtedly be a third come Sunday night in Berlin when the final ends.
The first was when the England manager feared it was all beginning to fall apart. The group was won in a dull goalless draw against Slovenia in Cologne and beer cups were thrown at him in anger and frustration from the stands as he walked around the pitch.
Southgate’s response? He strode even more purposefully towards his abusers. “There was a danger [of it unravelling] but I was determined to confront it,” he says. “When the beer came over I was going to go and walk towards it because we fought too hard to change the environment for the players.
“We’ve got players here who are in their first tournament. They’ve actually come into it. We’ve got players who have learnt how to win with us and have been with us all the way through. We’ve got some who’ve got no fear anyway.
“But if we’d suddenly had this environment where it’s ‘I’m not so sure I did enjoy that’ that would have undone the progress we’ve made. So, I felt it important to fight for that in that moment. I was the only one who was going to be able to do that, really.
“And I have no problem if I’m the lightning conductor – to take that for the players. Because in the end that’s the job. The job is to allow them to perform at their best.”
![England fans vent their frustration after the 0-0 draw with Slovenia](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/football/2024/07/12/TELEMMGLPICT000383368653_17208116103190_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqO6QpIblidqHYceykOFBymHq0E-wqlJsfgefWO9x9-2I.jpeg?imwidth=350)
The second image was far more joyous but also, when you watch it, hugely raw and emotional and ‘out there’ as Southgate celebrated the dramatic last-minute win against the Netherlands that has set up Sunday’s encounter against Spain.
“Yeah, come on! One more! Come on!” Southgate shouts, as he shakes his finger and also shakes with the primal feelings flooding out of him. “Well, it doesn’t look so great if you beat Lithuania away, people would question that a bit more I guess!” Southgate says, laughing. “Look, I was doing that in 1990 when David Platt scored (in the last-16 of the World Cup against Belgium) and I was doing that in 1982 when Bryan Robson scored [against France], so that’s where I am. I’m an England fan in the dugout.”
Given the 53-year-old is so often portrayed as calm and mild-mannered – he is, but he is also passionate and hugely competitive – Southgate feels the need to explain, a little more, that explosion of emotion and what it means.
“I’ve got to be in a clear headspace, I’ve got to know myself well enough to know ‘Okay, this is how I have to operate and this is me’ and I’m less worried now if people like that, or people don’t like that. I don’t think that you have to be a certain way,” he says.
“That is my way and that is how I have to be. I’m not going to change because I think that people would see straight through that and players would see through that. But they know that I like to win and they know that I am as motivated to win as anyone else.”
![Gareth Southgate celebrates England reaching the Euro 2024 final](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/football/2024/07/12/TELEMMGLPICT000385215414_17208118005850_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqe2gUmjRsyy_1k97WQihbV47lQelJ5VzPwBW_rFOvCUM.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Southgate is a patriotic, fervent Englishman. It might be unusual for a manager, rather than a player, to talk about wanting to win “so much that it hurts” what would be England’s first trophy for the men’s team since 1966. But that is who he is.
“I am fortunate that I am the type of guy who you have to prod a lot to get a bark. That’s just how I am,” he says. “I don’t know why that’s how it is, probably something I get from my Dad [Clive]. He always managed his emotions really well. He also had a coach’s mentality, he was always looking after other people.
“I think we all grow up looking at those figures in our lives and, whether it is subconscious or not, you mimic and take on those traits. I owe a huge debt to him for lots of things. But that’s why I am the way I am.”
Southgate is a ‘fixer’. Like his father he looks after other people. It is the type of person he is. And he was determined to fix England’s underwhelming start to this campaign – in terms of the display – which drew such fierce criticism and, with pundits such as Gary Lineker, nasty attacks about being tactically “inept” and overseeing a “s---” performance.
“We weren’t playing at the level we wanted to. That was then a coaching challenge,” Southgate says. “How do we fix what we’re doing? How do we improve what we’re doing? That wasn’t necessarily on the training ground. That was at times open, honest conversations, confronting the reality of ‘This is the environment we’re in, guys… this still picture we’ve got of you’.”
So there was another image that Southgate used – a photograph, after the 1-1 draw against Denmark, with his players on their knees and the opponents celebrating. “We don’t want to see that body language again, we don’t want to see that feeling of defeat,” Southgate told his players.
![Declan Rice after England's draw with Denmark in the Euro 2024 group stage](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/football/2024/07/12/TELEMMGLPICT000382702942_17208120756400_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqXW5jbaVriFpHFNZrgcOJtrUPjgFzW0N6FiWZRSkyfLg.jpeg?imwidth=350)
“And in the end, most problems are resolvable. Maybe you run out of time, maybe you don’t get over the line. But we viewed it as not as a ‘what are we going to do here, doom and gloom’.”
Instead, it was “a different sort of challenge to the last three tournaments” and one he was adamant would be met head-on even if there is also a wider point that he wants to make.
Sunday’s game may be his 102nd and final one as England manager. With a contract that runs to the end of this year, and despite the Football Association being desperate for him to stay, Southgate may move on.
Part of the criticism he has faced has been his, in my view, laudable willingness to engage in wider issues beyond football. “I don’t regret it because I think this is a position of responsibility,” Southgate explains.
“You have a chance to make a difference in things that are important. I have my values. I never wanted to impose my values on people. But I think there are some fundamental human values that, if you get the chance to model them, then you should.
“I think those values are important. We live in what’s been an angry country. I would love that to be different as we move forward. Hopefully we can bring some temporary happiness. But we’re not going to change our country either. Maybe we can deliver some good examples.”
Talking about an “angry country” is reminiscent of what Southgate said before the last Euros final, in 2021, which ended in the agony of a penalty shoot-out defeat to Italy. Then he made a plea to “stop looking at the negatives of our own country”.
It went unheeded.
Winning the Euros now would undoubtedly bring happiness to the nation and might just complete the healing from Southgate’s own penalty miss in the semi-final of Euro ’96.
“As a player and an athlete you view those failures in a different sort of way,” he says. “As a coach, manager, leader, you recognise what you’re doing well. Had we gone out in the first knockout round here, I know I’ve managed this period better than I did in Russia [in the 2018 World Cup]. But that wouldn’t be how it was viewed and it would sound like nonsense to the man in the street. I completely understand that.
“But I know the job now and I’m really clear on being my own biggest critic, reviewing everything clearly.”
There will be another review, by the FA, after this tournament and one which Southgate will take part in – whether he quits or carries on. Maybe there is part of him that might just want to leave even if England win on Sunday. What a ‘mic-drop moment’ that would be. Whatever happens, it will be a thought-through decision but also one imbued with deep emotion.
“You get a different ride as a player than as a manager,” Southgate says. “I had to work through all of that and now I’ve realised what that is. I’ve got perspective, because I’ve seen people who have won things.
“Most national coaches here will have had criticism over the style of play, over selection or over results. It is what it is. Ours is maybe a bit louder because of expectation, history, everything else. But I understand it and that helps me rationalise it.”