After a hectic long weekend that included watching the Euro 2024 Final from A&E in Oldham, today has been the first day I’ve had the time to sit down and write since the Semi-Final.
I had been writing a breakdown of the final set to end on a hopeful note for the World Cup in 2026, after all we still had a brilliant team and a man at the helm who had never failed to get us to the business end of every major tournament.
Then I had an hour between trains at London Waterloo and that’s where I heard the news…
GARETH SOUTHGATE HAS RESIGNED AS ENGLAND MANAGER
More than 2 and a half hours later and I’m still digesting the new reality for our nation.
I know there will be many fans glad to see the back of Southgate after some of the performances from the team at this Euros, but for all the bad moments we still made the final and came one moment away from glory and no other manager since Sir Alf Ramsay has given us that.
In his first tournament as England Manager and coming in off the back of Sam Allardyce’s disastrous 67days at the helm, not to mention the ignominious humiliation at the hands of minnows Iceland at Euro 2016, Southgate got us all the way to the semi-finals.
He managed to turn things around so comprehensively the he even managed to crack, first-time, a puzzle that no previous England Manager ever came close to solving… how to win a penalty shoot-out!!
The nerves that night were turned up to 11 but having felt the crushing despondency of shoot-out failure at Euro 1996, he had his men well drilled in the art and in their first World Cup knockout match in 12 years Southgate’s team banished a national taboo to the annals of history!!!
Having thrown the monkey from the backs of a nation in 2018, and our first semi-final since Italia ’90, Gareth took us that one step further at Euro 2020/2021 by guiding the nation to our first major tournament final since 1966!!!!
Okay, so this time around Wembley wasn’t lit up with ecstatic Englishmen when penalties came back to haunt us once again, but such was the culture change bought on by the waistcoated maestro in 2018 that the discourse around this failure was more along the lines of frustration that such a great team had messed up, rather than resignation to the fact that fucking up on penalties was just a national tradition.
Southgate is the man who has changed that.
That the 2022 World Cup in Qatar will be seen as the lowest point of Southgate’s tenure, whilst being the high point for some of his predecessors whilst other never reached that high, is one of the greatest signals for the progression of our national game with the man from Watford steering the ship.
Even in the baking conditions of the desert Southgate was able to raise the national level once more and if we had managed to overcome an incredible French team, that took eventual winners Argentina all the way to penalties, we would doubtless have made back to back finals at major tournaments for the first time ever.
Back to back finals at the Euros would have to do instead as Mr. Southgate took one last shot at the title in Germany and made yet more English history in the process.
Not only was the game in Berlin last weekend our first ever final on foreign soil, having banished the taboo 6 years ago Mr. Southgate’s men took things one step further in our Quarter Final against the Swiss by proving the impossible is indeed possible.
They delivered the perfect 5 out of 5 penalty shoot-out victory, an achievement of such majestic beauty that we may never see it’s like again!!!!!
To my mind this was his crowning glory, to turn our national team from a laughing stock that had been unceremoniously dumped out of Euro 2016 by a country with a population lower than that of Liverpool into a team feared across the world and favourites to go deep at every opportunity.
Sure Sunday didn’t turn out quite as planned, but it’s down to Mr. Southgate that we even came close.
Now the nation must carve a path into the future without this football genius to guide us and on whoever’s shoulders that unenviable task falls I wish them the best of luck, they have one hell of an act to follow.
As for Mr. Gareth Southgate, the man who made all dreams seem possible, I can say only this….
THANK YOU FOR MAKING US DREAM ONCE MORE
The Football tourist 