England ‘entitlement’ over Southgate is shocking

There’s something Gareth Southgate’s most vocal England critics don’t take into account…and with his future up in the air, he has a chance to shut them up.

As we write this, the position on Gareth Southgate’s future appears to be this: the FA want him to stay, regardless of what happens against Spain on Sunday, but his own stance is not yet clear.

Would you blame him, at this point, if a victorious Southgate were to pull an Aime Jacquet and waltz off with the trophy, uncharacteristically yelling ‘see you later, lads’, and never return to the dugout ever again?

Absolutely not. There he is, even without a trophy, by far the most consistently high-performing England manager in 60 years.

Gareth Southgate’s England record speaks for itself
England’s record at major tournaments since Southgate got the unexpected chance to take over from Sam Allardyce in 2016 has been superb by any measure: they have reached three semi-finals out of four and gone on to reach the final of consecutive European Championships.

That means that Southgate has had more semis than any other manager in the national team’s history. In fact, the rest of them had just three semis between them, with Alf Ramsey the only previous manager to have one better by achieving a glorious climax in 1966. On Sunday, Southgate will become the first and only England manager ever to have led them into two finals. Some didn’t even get as far as taking them to two tournaments.

In spite of this, Southgate has faced ardent criticism from some sections of the England fanbase and media for his failure to go all the way, with some feeling that their success has come in spite of him, rather than because of him.

And yes, like everyone else, we have had criticisms of Southgate – and confess we have wondered, amid the deeply unimpressive performances earlier in the tournament, whether this side might now benefit from a different set of ideas behind them. There are deleted drafts from the Slovakia game sitting in every football website’s CMS, including our own, to bear that out.

But there’s nothing revisionist in saying we will always defend Southgate against the mouth-breathers who question why he was still in the job going into Euro 2024 having taken over a crap side who lost to Iceland months earlier in 2016, to going within a penalty shootout of winning the next Euros. Earlier this summer, he was greeted with boos and pelted with beer cups.

The entitlement is genuinely astonishing, and it would be incredibly sweet for Southgate to stick two fingers up at those critics by bringing the trophy home, which you suspect would be the closest he has ever come to sticking two fingers up at anyone.