England fans turned on Southgate – they will take some winning back
This was meant to be the night when the England team were reunited with their adoring public, the first home game away from Wembley in front of a full crowd for three years.
Instead, it became the night when the public finally turned on Gareth Southgate. Losing 4-0 at home to Hungary is one thing, but what will stick in the memory from is the sight and sound of thousands of England fans singing “You don’t know what you’re doing” at Southgate repeatedly during the second half. Or when they booed the replacement of Bukayo Saka with Harry Maguire. Or when they called for Southgate to be sacked on Wednesday morning. Or when they booed him again when he tried to front up and applaud the crowd after the final whistle.
Or, most memorable of all, at least from this seat in the press box, the fan in the retro England shirt who stormed out in the second half, leaving with the parting shot before he vanished into the concourse: “Fuck off Southgate, you negative bastard.”
Welcome to the new phase of the Southgate tenure. It is worth being explicit about how unfamiliar this was, and at odds with everything we have seen over the last six years. Not just the scoreline, because anything can happen in a low-stakes, end-of-season game like this. But the way the crowd turned on Southgate, blamed him specifically, and called for his head was still a surprise. This was vicious, toxic and personal and directed at one man. It felt like everything that Southgate and his players had built over the last six years was turning sour.
The underpinning of the whole Southgate era up until Tuesday night had been his relationship with the fans. Before Volgograd or Samara, before Eric Dier’s penalty or Kieran Trippier’s free-kick, before Seville or any of those thrilling Wembley wins from last summer: Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany and Denmark. Before any of that there was a hope that Southgate could reconnect this team and their public, and give the fans a team they could be proud of again.
For almost six years, Southgate has done this better than anyone could have expected. He has not just grown into the role, but far beyond its normal scope. He is not only a coach or a manager but a national father figure, a spokesman for the soul of the game, and (at least until this week) one of the few unifying figures in the country.
The humble waistcoat is now synonymous with him. So is “Whole Again”, the Atomic Kitten single that sold millions of copies when Southgate was still playing for Aston Villa. Even early on Tuesday evening, England fans congregating outside the pubs of Wolverhampton were still singing it.
So what changed over 90 minutes? Were the England crowd that invested in their Nations League campaign? Do they feel so humiliated by the prospect of England being relegated down to the B groups for the competition’s next version? Is our national pride so fragile that we need to replace Southgate with someone who will drag the team back into the top flight?
Maybe this is unfair, and maybe the Southgate-sceptics deserve to be heard out. There is no question that the last four games have been bad for England. They have taken two points, scored one goal (a Harry Kane penalty) and not created many more chances.
More worrying than the results have been the performances, not one of which has pointed to a team confidently moving towards its peak in Qatar five months from now. Southgate said that he wanted to learn from these games but from the outside it does not feel as if any of the major problems — the system, the lack of a third goalscorer, the best roles for Jack Grealish or Phil Foden — have been solved.
But even then, it feels like a stretch to think England fans would have been that upset about these particular games. What sounds more likely, as an explanation for Tuesday night, is that this was the bubbling-over for a long trend of Southgate-scepticism over the last few years.
This may be a reaction to how England lost control of the Euro 2020 final (just as they did the World Cup semi-final three years before). It could be to do with the failure to get the most from Grealish or Foden, or the perception Southgate still favours safety-first football. The fan who called Southgate a “negative bastard” was clearly not speaking only for himself. There is a perception — one growing among England fans — that Southgate simply is not an elite coach. Results like this bring feelings like that into the open.
It felt watching the abuse on Tuesday night that some fans felt they were finally permitted to express the feelings they had felt for some time. Certainly since the Euros final last July and maybe even since the World Cup in 2018.
That may well be unfair on Southgate, but that much toxicity does not simply appear out of nowhere. It bubbles under, suppressed, until it bursts up into the open. This was that explosion. There has not been a scene like this in English football for some time: Roy Hodgson was largely popular until the final game, Fabio Capello never liked but always respected. You have to go back to the dark days of Steve McClaren in Andorra for anything like this.
When Southgate gave his post-match press conference, he looked like a man torn between two impulses. On the one hand, he accepted that a level of criticism was finally overdue given how long he had been in the job. “You’re not going to be the England manager, it’s not realistic, to have the ride I’ve had for five years and not have bad nights, difficult nights, and criticism,” he said. “That’s part and parcel of the job.”
But Southgate’s other impulse was to push back against the criticism. He clearly thinks that what he calls the “reputational comments” are unfair after this Nations League campaign (and in their 2020-21 campaign), largely because in neither campaign has he been able to field a full-strength team.
He was aware of this criticism before this game and spoke of how he disagreed with the “narrative” after the Germany game, when England were outplayed but scraped a 1-1 draw in the second half. Southgate pointed to how perceptions have changed in just the last “10 days” and explained how, whatever has happened in the Nations League, his tournament record still speaks for itself. And those are the games where his predecessors have been judged.
Ultimately this is what all Southgate analysis hinges on. What do we make of those two tournament campaigns? Once-in-a-lifetime progress, showing more nous and style than any England team in generations? Or just two lucky campaigns, making the most of favourable draws, set pieces and (at times) home advantage, before routinely losing to the first good midfield they face?
It used to be that the English football public took the former view, that they were so grateful to Southgate for his work that they could overlook his shortcomings in other areas. But what if the public no longer feels that way? What if they are now moving to the second position, that Southgate’s tournament success, such as it is, does not look as impressive as it used to.
It always felt as if the last few years had earned Southgate so much credit in the bank that he could afford a few bad days at the office. But this week felt like the week that credit dried up. If so, that gives Southgate another hard job this winter as well as everything else: winning that credit back with the fans.
https://theathletic.com/3360673/2022/06/15/england-gareth-southgate-hungary/
England fans turned on Southgate – they will take some winning back
This was meant to be the night when the England team were reunited with their adoring public, the first home game away from Wembley in front of a full crowd for three years.
Instead, it became the night when the public finally turned on Gareth Southgate. Losing 4-0 at home to Hungary is one thing, but what will stick in the memory from is the sight and sound of thousands of England fans singing “You don’t know what you’re doing” at Southgate repeatedly during the second half. Or when they booed the replacement of Bukayo Saka with Harry Maguire. Or when they called for Southgate to be sacked on Wednesday morning. Or when they booed him again when he tried to front up and applaud the crowd after the final whistle.
Or, most memorable of all, at least from this seat in the press box, the fan in the retro England shirt who stormed out in the second half, leaving with the parting shot before he vanished into the concourse: “Fuck off Southgate, you negative bastard.”
Welcome to the new phase of the Southgate tenure. It is worth being explicit about how unfamiliar this was, and at odds with everything we have seen over the last six years. Not just the scoreline, because anything can happen in a low-stakes, end-of-season game like this. But the way the crowd turned on Southgate, blamed him specifically, and called for his head was still a surprise. This was vicious, toxic and personal and directed at one man. It felt like everything that Southgate and his players had built over the last six years was turning sour.
The underpinning of the whole Southgate era up until Tuesday night had been his relationship with the fans. Before Volgograd or Samara, before Eric Dier’s penalty or Kieran Trippier’s free-kick, before Seville or any of those thrilling Wembley wins from last summer: Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany and Denmark. Before any of that there was a hope that Southgate could reconnect this team and their public, and give the fans a team they could be proud of again.
For almost six years, Southgate has done this better than anyone could have expected. He has not just grown into the role, but far beyond its normal scope. He is not only a coach or a manager but a national father figure, a spokesman for the soul of the game, and (at least until this week) one of the few unifying figures in the country.
The humble waistcoat is now synonymous with him. So is “Whole Again”, the Atomic Kitten single that sold millions of copies when Southgate was still playing for Aston Villa. Even early on Tuesday evening, England fans congregating outside the pubs of Wolverhampton were still singing it.
So what changed over 90 minutes? Were the England crowd that invested in their Nations League campaign? Do they feel so humiliated by the prospect of England being relegated down to the B groups for the competition’s next version? Is our national pride so fragile that we need to replace Southgate with someone who will drag the team back into the top flight?
Maybe this is unfair, and maybe the Southgate-sceptics deserve to be heard out. There is no question that the last four games have been bad for England. They have taken two points, scored one goal (a Harry Kane penalty) and not created many more chances.
More worrying than the results have been the performances, not one of which has pointed to a team confidently moving towards its peak in Qatar five months from now. Southgate said that he wanted to learn from these games but from the outside it does not feel as if any of the major problems — the system, the lack of a third goalscorer, the best roles for Jack Grealish or Phil Foden — have been solved.
But even then, it feels like a stretch to think England fans would have been that upset about these particular games. What sounds more likely, as an explanation for Tuesday night, is that this was the bubbling-over for a long trend of Southgate-scepticism over the last few years.
This may be a reaction to how England lost control of the Euro 2020 final (just as they did the World Cup semi-final three years before). It could be to do with the failure to get the most from Grealish or Foden, or the perception Southgate still favours safety-first football. The fan who called Southgate a “negative bastard” was clearly not speaking only for himself. There is a perception — one growing among England fans — that Southgate simply is not an elite coach. Results like this bring feelings like that into the open.
It felt watching the abuse on Tuesday night that some fans felt they were finally permitted to express the feelings they had felt for some time. Certainly since the Euros final last July and maybe even since the World Cup in 2018.
That may well be unfair on Southgate, but that much toxicity does not simply appear out of nowhere. It bubbles under, suppressed, until it bursts up into the open. This was that explosion. There has not been a scene like this in English football for some time: Roy Hodgson was largely popular until the final game, Fabio Capello never liked but always respected. You have to go back to the dark days of Steve McClaren in Andorra for anything like this.
When Southgate gave his post-match press conference, he looked like a man torn between two impulses. On the one hand, he accepted that a level of criticism was finally overdue given how long he had been in the job. “You’re not going to be the England manager, it’s not realistic, to have the ride I’ve had for five years and not have bad nights, difficult nights, and criticism,” he said. “That’s part and parcel of the job.”
But Southgate’s other impulse was to push back against the criticism. He clearly thinks that what he calls the “reputational comments” are unfair after this Nations League campaign (and in their 2020-21 campaign), largely because in neither campaign has he been able to field a full-strength team.
He was aware of this criticism before this game and spoke of how he disagreed with the “narrative” after the Germany game, when England were outplayed but scraped a 1-1 draw in the second half. Southgate pointed to how perceptions have changed in just the last “10 days” and explained how, whatever has happened in the Nations League, his tournament record still speaks for itself. And those are the games where his predecessors have been judged.
Ultimately this is what all Southgate analysis hinges on. What do we make of those two tournament campaigns? Once-in-a-lifetime progress, showing more nous and style than any England team in generations? Or just two lucky campaigns, making the most of favourable draws, set pieces and (at times) home advantage, before routinely losing to the first good midfield they face?
It used to be that the English football public took the former view, that they were so grateful to Southgate for his work that they could overlook his shortcomings in other areas. But what if the public no longer feels that way? What if they are now moving to the second position, that Southgate’s tournament success, such as it is, does not look as impressive as it used to.
It always felt as if the last few years had earned Southgate so much credit in the bank that he could afford a few bad days at the office. But this week felt like the week that credit dried up. If so, that gives Southgate another hard job this winter as well as everything else: winning that credit back with the fans.
https://theathletic.com/3360673/2022/06/15/england-gareth-southgate-hungary/