Could Southgate turn fantasy into reality with a Euro win for England?

British Foreign Secretaries have often claimed, not convincingly, that in international affairs the United Kingdom punches above its weight. When it comes to international football, one may more convincingly say that England has consistently punched below its weight. It should, one thinks, have done better. In reality, it has done feebly.

So, even before guiding his team to the final of the Euros Gareth Southgate had already surpassed most of his predecessors by leading it to the semi-final of the World Cup in Russia. If his men can beat Italy and lift the Cup tomorrow, he will not only have ended years of disappointment. He will have turned fantasy into reality.

I choose the word fantasy carefully and after consideration. There has been a fantasy nursed for generations – throughout the half-century and more since Bobby Moore hoisted the Jules Rimet Trophy and Alf Ramsay’s England were champions of the world. This was in the view of many English fans and the popular Press no more than was right and proper. The Nation that gave football to the world ruled again and deserved to do so.

But the truth is, England has never been one of the world’s top leading nations; it has never been a great football power, not, that is, since other countries took the game nurtured in England and Scotland and made it their own. England’s record compares badly with Brazil’s, Argentina’s and Uruguay’s. It compares badly with that of other European countries: Germany, Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal, Greece, the Czech Republic, Belgium, and, in the old days before the collapse of the Soviet empire, the Soviet Union itself and Czechoslovakia, all of whom have won or reached the final of the European Championship or Cup. This is something England have achieved only now. Moreover, Germany, Italy, Spain and France have all won the World Cup since England did so, way back in the days when boys in primary school wore shorts.

What gave England its extraordinary conceit, a conceit that repeatedly provoked great expectations? It is, of course, England’s national game. But countries all over the world can say that too. More to the point English clubs have succeeded where England has failed. The leading clubs in the Premiership enjoy worldwide fame and have worldwide fan bases. Kids in Asia and Africa proclaim their love of Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, even Spurs. Moreover, in this decade, as in the 1970s, English clubs have been winning European and Europa Cups. Their leading players are global celebrities. This run of success has given English fans a good conceit of themselves. 

In reality, however, the top football clubs in England, like those in most western European countries, draw their star players from everywhere and anywhere. So the strength of the clubs is of little relevance to the strength of a national team. Sometimes one has even felt that home-grown players too often and too easily ceded leadership to their foreign stars, and were reluctant to take responsibility. This reluctance was reflected in England’s record in World and European Cups. Yet, at the same time, there was still an arrogant assumption that England should win trophies. This, I think, has changed. That arrogance has withered.

Gareth Southgate is as far from being a celebrity manager as can be imagined. His own playing career was respectable, though for years English fans thought of him chiefly as the man who failed in a semi-final penalty shoot-out against Germany. He never managed a big club, and his time at Middlesbrough ended, as most managers’ careers do, in failure and dismissal.

The turning point for him was his appointment as manager/coach of England’s under-21 side. He seems to have a natural empathy with young players; he’s a guide and leader, not an enforcer. He set himself to give his charges a deeper understanding of the game and to become more streetwise.

When the veteran and much respected Roy Hodgson left the England manager’s job after the 2016 Euros there was the brief Sam Allardyce interregnum. Southgate was at first reluctant to succeed him, and indeed the FA bosses had no great enthusiasm either, appointing him first on a temporary match-by-match basis. It should be said that Hodgson had taken the first steps towards ending the English sense of unearned entitlement. Southgate has followed very effectively and sympathetically in his wake.

So here we are, with England at last in a final, and with the good fortune that it is to be played at Wembley. Southgate has put together an intelligent and likeable team. In the semi-final against Demark, they came from a goal down to take the match into extra time and then win it. Raheem Sterling has been excellent all tournament. In Wednesday’s match, he repeatedly disturbed the Danish defence with his clever wing-play, leaving a marker uncertain whether he was cutting in or going out and he has been praised for the street wisdom he displayed in “winning” a penalty, going to ground on the lightest of touches while not quite seeming to dive. Well, those who still take the Corinthian view of sport may deplore the approval accorded to “winning a penalty”, but whether you like it or not, this has been part of the language and of reality in both football and rugby for a long time now.

What Southgate seems to have given England is not only confidence and self-respect but an understanding of how to make the game difficult for their opponents. Doing this puts you on the way to winning matches. A good deal of dash has been taken out of football, as it has come to resemble a game of animated chess, occupation of certain squares on the board to deny opponents the freedom to move being an essential feature of the modern game. It is one in which possession is often the key to victory. So, for instance, after England had taken the lead in extra-time against Denmark, there was a passage of play lasting more than two minutes in which England moved the ball to-and-fro with neat short passes, making no progress but choking the Danes who were desperate for the ball. It was expertly done, like Munster in their great days in rugby’s Heineken Cup when frustrating the opposition was the pre-eminent aim.

Nevertheless, much as England have improved and learned how to win, they cannot reasonably be held to be favourites in tomorrow’s final. Indeed, if the match was in Rome, not Wembley, they would very much be underdogs. If Southgate has transformed England’s fortunes, his Italian counterpart Roberto Mancini has rescued Italy from the shipwreck which saw them sink in their attempt to qualify for the 2017 World Cup. Now, Mancini’s team are on a thirty-three match undefeated run. In their two veteran defenders, Giorgio Chiellini, with a profile like a Roman Emperor, and Leonardo Bonucci, they have Guardians of a near-impregnable citadel, men who hold the ball, slow the same and dictate play. Theirs is a great watchword: “ sdrammatizzare” – cut out the theatre, calm things down. For them, position is more important than possession. In the semi-final against Spain, a match acclaimed as the finest and most skilful of the tournament, Italy enjoyed only 30 per cent of possession but took the game into extra-time and a winning penalty shoot-out. Who would bet against the same outcome tomorrow?

Yet the feeling persists – even insists – that this may, at last, be England’s tournament. Few can doubt that they are better prepared to win the Cup than any England side has been since – well, 1966. I would be happy to see them win, even though some of the more tiresome of my fellow Scots in the Tartan Army would be left crowing: “they won the Cup but they could only draw, no score, against us”.