In the end, it didn’t really matter. When the referee blew the final whistle after a mere four minutes of added time, as if he couldn’t wait to get off the pitch, the game had long been over, at least in my mind. I wasn’t even ‘gutted’, as we football types call it. Resignation had taken over from blind optimism, we were now into our 59th year of hurt and Spain were champions of Europe. As you were.
I’d fallen for the pre-match hype, of course. I ‘fancied us to win‘ against a brilliant young Spanish side because, well, I just did. For once, the square pegs would fit in square holes; it would sort of click. Harry Kane would shake off whatever is that’s causing his apparent lethargy and lead us to the promised land. We had the best player in Germany (Kane, again), the best player in Spain (Jude Bellingham) and, in my opinion, the best player in England (Phil Foden). But the holes were still round, it didn’t sort of click and we fell short.
The media and armchair classes have made up their minds. The manager must go. It’s time for change because, well, it’s time for change. Someone else will come in and succeed where Southgate supposedly failed and work with what on paper is a stellar looking group of forwards and help us make the next level. And I think he will go to be replaced by? Oh the powers that be can sort that one out, the very same people who gave us Sam Allardyce. Those powers that be.
Whoever the mysterious mandarins at the FA choose to succeed Southgate, some people will never be happy. Many countries have systems in place, a succession plan. We are one such country and if we follow the succession plan, the Under 21 head coach Lee Carsley will step up. It would make sense given that Carsley has been part of the system for nearly four years and in July 2023 he led his players to the final of the European Championships where they played … Spain. And won. I’d like him to be the one, but I know, from reading social media, many would like ‘a name’ manager. Someone to preside only over the national team and nothing else. A great motivator and tactician who would just turn up in international week and create a winning team, just like Sven-Göran Eriksson and Fabio Capello did in their glory years with England. Serial winners both at club level, unlike Southgate. What could possibly go wrong?
The second the game was over, we switched TV channels. We had seen enough, I quarrelled briefly with social media football experts but my heart wasn’t in it. The nation, it seemed, was in the depths of a collective deep depression. There was a time, not that long ago, when I was, too. No more. I still want my national team to win but if approaching old age hasn’t yet brought me wisdom, it has at least given me perspective. I woke up today and the world is still turning, I still have my family and my friends, my music, my writing and it is not, yet anyway, the end of the world as we know it.
As for football, at long last it’s the end of a season that has gone on seemingly forever so for now we can enjoy the close season. Except that there isn’t a close season because next season is all but here already, with countless European qualifying games taking place, as well as the European Under 19 Championships and a million or so friendly matches taking place. In other words, football doesn’t now start again because it never finished and it never does.
Gareth Southgate allowed us to dare to dream. History should look fondly at his achievements, not just with his unprecedented consistent achievement of going deep in so many tournaments. A decent man who made it fun to play for and support England again. A man who was hugely influential in putting together systems and pathways for players to progress in the national set up. There is much more to him than the bloke who always came up short, as we are constantly told.
I’ll leave the critics to it from now on. Euro 2024 has come and gone and it’s not coming home. Maybe we will give the next manager a chance, abandon our sense of entitlement and offer unqualified support from beginning to end in matches and tournaments, to stop telling the manager he doesn’t know what he’s doing and then start throwing things at him. Maybe pigs will fly, too.
And maybe one day we will finally win something. After the 2019 general election, when Jeremy Corbyn led Labour to a disastrous defeat against Boris Johnson, I feared Labour might never win again. Less than five years later, under new management, we’re back again. Maybe a new manager might do the same for the national football team? I’m even less sure about that one, but we can always hope and maybe even dream.
