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England, Gareth Southgate and why it turns out you can be too careful
WOE DE COLOGNE
Gareth Southgate gets planning permission to build sandcastles. Gareth Southgate wears a seatbelt when he sits on the toilet. Gareth Southgate’s favourite sandwich filling is another slice of bread. Various Social Media Disgraces were aflame on Tuesday night, offering – and it should be clarified for legal reasons – imagined scenarios in which England’s manager could apply the handbrake outside of his reported £5m-a-year job. Southgate was trending because of England’s 0-0 draw with European heavyweights Slovenia, a performance that one could only describe as an absolute bonfire of a football match if it passed the relevant fire and safety checks.
The saying goes: “You can’t be too careful”. It turns out you can, as Southgate put on a tactical masterclass in how to suck the life out of some of the best players in the world. In arguably the easiest group of the Euros, with the European Golden Boot winner and several other Ballon d’Or candidates in the squad, England have scored two goals in three games. With seven goals in the nine matches, Group C is the joint lowest-scoring group in Euros history. Against Slovenia, placed 57th in the Fifa world rankings (for context Scotland are 39th), with a population of two million people and just four of their 26-man squad playing club football in Europe’s top five leagues, England showed about as much enterprise as Euro 2024 Daily picking its nose with a jam jar.
Any one player is allowed a bad game. But if everyone has a stinker, then it’s probably something more deep rooted. Jude Bellingham was doing a good impression of impersonating David James’s outfield cameo for Manchester City. Phil Foden was sent to the left wing, when it is abundantly obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes that he has more in common with the Daily Express’ leanings than Kieran Trippier. Harry Kane spent most of the evening in Cologne wandering around the midfield hoping someone might finally notice him. And despite both of England’s goals this tournament coming from the right flank, when Kyle Walker was finally allowed to enter the opposition’s half, the defender spent his evening firing hopeful passes to a marooned Bukayo Saka, who in turn spent most of his evening passing the ball straight back.
Southgate was seemingly shocked to learn that England fans – most of whom have spent thousands of pounds and cashed in their brownie points to attend the game were not grateful for that goalless draw. Instead a few plastic beer cups and some choice words were hurled at the England manager as he did his lap of honour. “I understand the narrative towards me,” comprehended Southgate. “That’s better for the team than it being towards them but it is creating an unusual environment to operate in. I’ve not seen any other team qualify and receive similar. We’ve made England fun again and it’s been very, very enjoyable for the players. We’ve got to be careful it stays that way.” He continued: “I recognise when you have moments at the end of the game, I’m asking the players to be fearless.” We’re pretty sure he’s not, and that’s the point. Nobody is saying Southgate is a bad bloke. His eight-year tenure has been run almost exclusively on vibes since its inception. Vibes are good! Harry Maguire on the Love Train and Saka on an inflatable unicorn certainly have their merits. Just probably not enough to conquer Europe’s footballing elite. The sooner the rest of England accepts that, the better.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Barry Glendenning at 5pm BST for updates on Ukraine 2-2 Belgium, while Michael Butler will be on hand at the same time for Slovakia 0-0 Romania. And at 8pm BST, Rob Smyth is covering Georgia 1-1 Portugal while Scott Murray takes in Czech Republic 2-1 Turkey.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
This war has been affecting Ukrainian players every day for more than two years. Yesterday, the Russians attacked Kharkiv with aerial bombs, causing destruction and casualties. Every day you read such news. It is unknown how long this war will continue. All players have friends and relatives in Ukraine. We think about our country and our people [every day]” – veteran midfielder Taras Stepanenko with some perspective before his nation’s vital (only in the football sense) final group game against Belgium.
EURO 2024 DAILY LETTERS
As we are reinventing national football shirts and logos this week (Euro 2024 Daily letters passim), it goes without saying that Nessie should long since have been adapted as Scotland’s emblem: a strange, shapeless creature that continues to plumb the depths of her realm, yet somehow surfaces every few decades to get Scottish hearts giddily racing about what inevitably turns out to be a complete chimera” – Justin Kavanagh.
Am I the only one that blames Marks & Spencer for the way England are playing? We were doing fine when Gareth Southgate was wearing his waistcoat. Then we sign a new deal with M&S and he starts wearing some weird, short-sleeve, cream, woollen polo, starts dropping players like Marcus Rashford and Jack Grealish (solely on the basis that they weren’t playing well), he only picks one left-back (who is knacked) and suddenly we are by far the worst team in the tournament (excluding Scotland, obviously). It’s like when Andre Agassi’s tennis racket deal with Prince ran out and he switched to Donnay, which proved to be a disaster so he started using the Prince one again but with a Donnay logo painted on it (see autobiography for further details). Come on Southgate, stop ignoring the magical properties of the waistcoat and let’s Make England Great Ag … oh, that means something different these days, doesn’t it?” – Noble Francis.
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s prizeless letter o’ the day winner is … Noble Francis. Terms and conditions for our competitions can be viewed here.
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