Gareth Southgate’s near eight-year stint as England manager has come to an end, the FA announced on Tuesday morning.
The announcement comes barely 48-hours on from England’s defeat at the hands of Spain in the final of EURO 2024, where Cole Palmer’s late equaliser was cancelled out by an even later Mikel Oyarzabal goal. As Spain lifted their fourth Euros title, England became the first team ever to lose consecutive European Championship finals.
While Southgate faced stiff criticism throughout the tournament for his conservative tactics and confusing substitutions, this sentiment is far from representative of his England career as a whole.
After taking over from Sam Allardyce in 2016, Southgate inherited a team in transition, fresh off the back of one of the most humiliating defeats in its history, a 2-1 loss to Iceland at EURO 2016.
Southgate impressed enough to earn promotion from interim manager to the full-time job, eventually leading the Three Lions to a pair of European Championship finals and a World Cup semi-final. While he failed to end what is now a 58-year trophy drought, he made England a contender worth watching again, and for that we can only be grateful.
England 2-0 Malta, Wembley Stadium, World Cup Qualifying
Southgate’s first England match was nearly a decade ago, but, in hindsight, it was a rather good signifier of how the rest of his time in charge would go. England dominated, achieving 79.9% possession and 20 shots, ultimately strolling to a routine if uninspiring win.
With minimal first-team managerial experience, expectations were low but his side managed a comfortable home win over one of Europe’s smallest nations, courtesy of goals from Daniel Sturridge and Dele Alli. Remember them?
If those goal scorers are not enough of a sign of the times, try the rest of the squad. Joe Hart started between the sticks, with Ryan Bertrand, Gary Cahill, and Wayne Rooney joining him in the starting eleven. Jesse Lingard was handed his debut, while Kyle Walker and John Stones became the only players to appear in both Southgate’s first and final starting lineups.
It may not have been a memorable outing, but it was the first tally of many in the win column for Southgate’s England.
Colombia 1-1 England (P: 3-4), Okritie Arena, World Cup 2018
Perhaps Southgate’s greatest achievement as England manager is breaking the penalty shootout jinx which had plagued the Three Lions for decades, finally managing it on a humid July night in Moscow at the 2018 World Cup.
An emphatic Harry Kane penalty was neutralized with mere seconds left on the clock by Yerry Mina, dooming supporters to a cagey period of extra-time. That familiar feeling of dread mixed with inevitability began to set in.
One of the great themes of Southgate’s reign is Jordan Pickford’s consistency in goal. He established himself over these eight years as England’s undisputed number one, and this match made for the top line on his resume. He made a gravity-defying fingertip save in extra time to help England to reach penalties before saving from Carlos Bacca with an outstretched left hand to take the lead. Mateus Uribe’s miss wrote the match into English history books.
The endless mental preparation that goes into winning a penalty shootout is among the most complex topics in football. Countless books, dissertations, and studies have been written on the subject. Throughout his tenure, Southgate worked to create as welcoming an environment as possible in the England camp, placing an emphasis on togetherness and accountability, a foreign concept relative to the cliquey nature of England squads of old. In doing so, he laid the groundwork for what is arguably the most notable change in England’s fortunes, not to mention banishing his own personal demons from EURO 1996.
Albania 0-2 England, Qemel Stafa, World Cup Qualifying
We did not know it at the time, but the halfway point of Southgate’s England career was an innocuous world cup qualifier on the road in Tirana. Bringing a decidedly mediocre win rate of 64% into the trip, his team played out another routine win which in many ways was very similar to his first match in charge: uninspiring, but got the job done.
There was clear progress, though. While Stones and Walker remained in their roles as stalwart members of the back line alongside Harry Maguire, the additions of Kalvin Phillips, Mason Mount, and Phil Foden highlighted a willingness to break from tradition and trust in England’s wealth of young talent.
With the start of a seminal Euros campaign just weeks away, Southgate’s England had its destiny in hand. With an exciting young squad and a confident, likeable manager, anything could happen. England were a changed team.
England 2-0 Germany, Wembley Stadium, EURO 2020
Southgate faced Die Mannschaft on five occasions while in charge of England, managing just one win in the EURO 2020 Round of 16, and oh, how sweet it was. Under the Wembley arch, Raheem Sterling waited until the 75th minute to open the scoring, tapping home a Luke Shaw cross ten minutes before Kane doubled the lead with a near carbon-copy goal.
The vendetta between England and Germany has deep roots and shows no sign of waning. Germany unceremoniously dumped England out of the World Cup in 2010 and issued a crushing defeat after penalties at Euro ’96, but the Three Lions got their own back on home soil, and it was thanks in no small part to Southgate, getting his win when it mattered most, gaining crucial momentum and self-belief on the way to a first European Championship final appearance.
England 1-2 France, Al Bayt Stadium, World Cup 2022
England’s quarter-final exit from the Qatar World Cup exemplified the team’s most glaring shortcoming: the Three Lions under Southgate were often able to fight their way into important matches but failed to get the result over the line, as seen in the Euros finals losses to Italy and Spain.
England’s inherent quality of never quite being good enough was laid bare as Les Bleus totally outclassed them. Reduced to praying for penalties, Southgate’s side was eventually let down by Harry Kane’s usually flawless finishing from the spot. Given the chance to equalise, he fired over form 12-yards. England lost to the better team, hearts broke nationwide, and the narrative turned once again to discussions of the team’s luck in spite of the world-class talent within it.
Throughout Southgate’s years of England management, this has been the constant theme. A world class squad relies on good fortune to scrape into the late stages of a tournament before a team with the requisite lethality cuts them out. For all the happy memories Southgate brought, this is ultimately how his tenure will be remembered.
Netherlands 1-2 England, Signal Iduna Park, EURO 2024
Ollie Watkins’ 90th minute winner in the semi-finals of EURO 2024 may well be the most euphoric moment of the Southgate era. After a tournament which had been generally difficult to watch, England were once again on the brink of extra-time and yet another dreaded penalty shootout. That is, until Cole Palmer played a through ball into Watkins, who took a solitary touch and rifled his shot into the far corner.
As players and supporters alike celebrated wildly, we were reminded of another characteristic of Southgate’s England: the ability to win ugly. This was seen constantly throughout EURO 2024, not to mention the remainder of Southgate’s career. How many times did England play poorly, leave it late, rely on a last-minute moment of individual brilliance to claim a crucial win?
While the football played by Southgate’s England was not always pretty, the results were undeniable. While football never quite came home under his leadership, he built a mature, resilient team which has more success to its name than any other England team of the modern era, and that is a lot more than many of his predecessors can say.
