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WE WILL KEEP ON DOING WHAT WE BELIEVE IN

No goals, plenty of boos. As atmosphere around England turns toxic, Southgate maintains...

Oliver Holt

WHEN the final whistle blew at the end of England’s defeat by Italy on Friday night, Gareth Southgate strode on to the turf at San Siro in his dark suit and his black tie. He consoled a couple of his players. He hugged Jude Bellingham, who had provided an isolated glimpse of optimism on an otherwise bleak evening. He shook hands with the referee and the referee’s assistants.

And then he turned and gazed up to the top tier of the Curva Sud, where England’s thousands of travelling fans were massed. Southgate mustered as jaunty a wave as he could but he must have known what was coming. From high in the stadium, which is savouring its last matches before demolition, boos rolled down and boxed Southgate around the ears.

It is not the first time fans have rounded on the man who has spent much of his time in charge of the England team acclaimed as a national hero. He was the object of similar derision when England were humiliated by Hungary at Molineux in June. The World Cup in Qatar, cursed for its bloody and murky cradling, is almost upon us and things are getting ugly.

It was the end of Milan Fashion Week here but no one is swooning over Southgate’s dress sense any more. That phase of his England managerial career ended some time ago and he knows it. Southgate measured out his life as an England player in adversity and hate. He saw it all around him in the venom directed at managerial predecessors such as Kevin Keegan. He knows what it looks like.

And now he knows what it feels like, too. And he knows that, whatever happens against Germany tomorrow, he will lead England into their first game of the World Cup against Iran on November 21, not acclaimed as the team’s saviour but pilloried as its weak point and identified by more and more voices as the man wasting a generation of attacking talent with an overcautious approach.

‘England looking exhilaratingly safe,’ Gary Lineker, the BBC’s lead football presenter, wrote on Twitter before Southgate’s side conceded the only goal of the game to a rasping Giacomo Raspadori strike, and he speaks for many. Lineker will recognise this scenario from his playing days, too: England will go into this World Cup with their manager chained to the stake, just as Bobby Robson was ahead of Italia 90.

After the happy hiatus of the last two tournaments when the fans, and the media, swung behind Southgate and his players and watched them reach the semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup and the final of Euro 2020, this feels like a reversion to the norm. The ghosts of Robson and Graham Taylor walk among us still and now Southgate is steeling himself for the ordeal that lies ahead. The successes of those tournaments have been recast by many now as a parade of flukes and the luck of the draw. Even though Southgate has performed better as England manager than anyone since Sir Alf Ramsey, his critics have created a narrative that he has under-achieved.

There is another view — that he deserves immense credit for taking a lesser team, denuded of superstars, further than many sides stocked with greats — but that is increasingly being drowned out.

The damning of the manager leading into the World Cup creates an interesting dynamic because there is nowhere for the anger to go. It is too close to the tournament for Southgate to be fired or for him to resign. Much of the criticism of him is legitimate — England have not won for five matches and have not scored a goal from open play for 495 minutes — but the baiting of him is unlikely to improve the team’s chances in Qatar. It is a familiar dilemma.

Southgate’s solution is to invite his critics to do their worst, to spare the players and unload their angst on him.

‘I’ve seen every other

England manager have it,’ said Southgate, as he spoke to a group of journalists after the game. ‘I wasn’t, and never have been, carried away by praise. I know how the game is and it turns so quickly and you’re judged by results, and that’s that.

‘When you’re in a role for a long period, you’re going to have a spell when things are more difficult and that’s probably human nature. In the end I’ll be judged on the tournament and how we do in tournaments.

‘Would we have preferred a different run of results? Without a doubt. We’d like to be scoring goals freely, we’d like to be winning, but this is a different test for us and we’ve got to show we’re resilient enough to deal with that.

‘Nobody is going to enjoy being booed by the supporters, but I understand the job. It is what it is. Whenever you have a difficult run of results, it’s always going to be the manager who deals with that. That’s the job and I’ve got to get on with it.’

It was not the prelude to a World

Cup, but Southgate played against Germany in the last match at the old Wembley, in October 2000, and so was a witness to the abuse that rained down on Keegan that night and led to his resignation. But as he contemplated another meeting with England’s old foe, the last match before his side leave for Qatar, Southgate rejected the worth of comparisons with previous events.

‘I don’t think any of that is important,’ he said. ‘I know how people dealt with those situations. I’ve got to deal with it my own way. The biggest thing is I’ve got to make sure the team stays on track. We’ve got to keep doing things we think are right and assessing the things that we need to improve and it’s my job to take the pressure off the players and if it means that the reaction is towards me, that’s fine.

‘What we’ve done over the last six years is make the England shirt lighter to wear and if it’s me that has to deal with that criticism, it’s fine, because I’m 52 and have been through pretty much everything. I don’t agree the players look inhibited. I think they are free to play.

‘We always felt that with England you’ve got to keep winning matches to keep the pressure off and unfortunately the scenario in the summer created pressure, and this result is going to add to the noise around that. But it’s for me to deal with that. I’m the leader of the group and it’s up to me to keep them on track.’

Victory against Germany would shift the mood a little but some of Southgate’s critics in the England fan base, particularly those who disagree with the strong and proactive stance he and the players have taken on anti-racism, will not be for turning, whatever the result. The days of optimism and togetherness are gone.

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2022-09-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-09-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

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