Time for England fans to afford Gareth Southgate the love he deserves

At the very end of a long, emotional night in Dortmund, Gareth Southgate reached for his heart and held it out to the room. Always generous to England’s travelling supporters, perhaps because he would be watching alongside them given half a chance, he reflected on the scenes of delirium still unfolding outside.

“We all want to be loved, right?” he said, half-laughing and not really asking a question at all. “So when you’re doing something for your country and you’re a proud Englishman, and you don’t feel that back and all you read is criticism, it’s so hard. To give our fans a night like this means a lot. We’re kindred spirits in many ways.”

It would count as an olive branch only if there had ever been a two-way disagreement. Southgate has always been open, honest and reasonable in the face of flak. A man who used humour to lighten the bleakest of moments in 1996, through the medium of a Pizza Hut advert, was equally adept deploying patience and understanding when under a hideous volume of fire this summer. From Southgate’s viewpoint there has never been a quarrel with the national team’s followers.

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It is time for those fans, and others in England’s orbit, to afford Southgate the love he deserves. Nobody with a healthy sense of perspective could deny he has brought the country a seam of success unprecedented in its modern history, one that could be enriched headily with victory in Berlin on Sunday. Southgate’s future after the final is unclear but, whatever his fate, a journey will conclude. His route through Germany has become a strange personal voyage, played out in public to a large degree, taking him through places he might have thought were consigned to the past.

The aftermath of England’s draw with Denmark, a stodgy performance in their second group stage game, represented a low point in their manager’s career. While Southgate would later say little could shock him after two decades around the setup, it did not seem entirely true when he was then unacceptably the target of hurled beer cups after the stalemate against Slovenia.

Southgate and his players had already been surprised when, after a good first half against Serbia morphed into a battle of attrition, they were heavily reproached for the manner of their opening group stage victory. It was imperfect but viewed internally as another step for a squad of mixed experience in major tournaments. The negative reaction in Frankfurt to what was, on its own, a solid enough draw with the capable Danes has been a regular feature of his reflections in the fortnight since.

It formed part of the “unusual environment” to which he would refer after the Slovenia match. This week he referred to the process of working through that hostility as a “fascinating experience”. He had seen the team were perplexed to the point of overcaution and felt compelled to address the situation directly at their base in Blankenhain, showing them rivals’ celebrations to make the point that if it was good enough for them, England could hold their heads high too.

“Our world is different at the moment and I feel that is probably because of me,” Southgate said in the wake of that largely tedious group-stage performance. He made it clear that the brickbats should be thrown his way rather than towards the pitch. But he would have been entitled to wonder, away from the microphones, why him and why now. England were hardly labouring in their old trough of eternal disappointment. A golden generation has not been squandered. Euro 2024 was nowhere near finished. None of this should have been the final straw for anyone. In his three previous tournaments they had not made the last, glorious step but the on-field progress and genuine warmth he had cultivated inside the camp were obvious.

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Perhaps Southgate had fallen victim to the swelling perception, heightened by England’s failure to twist the knife in the Euro 2020 final with a country primed to erupt, that he is too cautious. But maybe there was something broader going on too. Perhaps the smothering obsession with every breath taken at the elite level of club football, coupled with an exhausting modern microanalytical insistence on perfection, has reduced tolerance for the less fluent and increasingly marginalised international game. So has the disposition towards rushed judgments. Zoom out further and Europe has become a skittish place that, notwithstanding recent election results, too easily braces for disappointment. Is it a stretch to suggest Southgate was punished for the job he holds, rather than for what he has done with it?

For an alternative dose of perspective, Southgate’s face has never been rendered as a turnip on the front of a national newspaper. Unlike Sir Bobby Robson, he has never been implored: “In the name of Allah, go.” The perpetual hum of discontent that has accompanied much of Euro 2024, and a swathe of his reign since the humbling by Hungary at Molineux two years ago, has never hit that kind of pitch.

Nobody would contend that Southgate is infallible. Had Jordan Pickford not saved from Virgil van Dijk during a laboured second half against the Netherlands he would have faced opprobrium for not responding sooner to Ronald Koeman’s first-half introduction of Joey Veerman. But there have been decisive in-tournament tweaks too. England look considerably more fluent in the 3-4-2-1 formation that lets Jude Bellingham and, particularly, Phil Foden maraud in pockets while giving Kobbie Mainoo licence to support them.

For anyone questioning his substitutions, bringing Ollie Watkins in from the cold to examine Stefan de Vrij’s immobility was a masterstroke that may have changed history. The players feel protective towards Southgate, even if their involvement has been sparing. “The real togetherness we have inside that squad is really around what Gareth created and what helps us go deep in these games,” Luke Shaw said on Monday, 48 hours before that was proved again.

The former Scotland manager Andy Roxburgh once used a good line that a manager’s demeanour in his post-match interviews is “an advert for the health of your team”. Southgate, upfront and earnest throughout the past month’s spiritual ride, reflects an England side impossible not to like. In doing so he presents a manager who has earned the right to be adored as he sets out for Berlin, too.