Is Gareth Southgate a winner? Who will have the FINAL word?

With England poised for an unprecedented second consecutive Euros final on Sunday, the question on everyone’s lips is “Can Gareth Southgate finally bring football home”?

In all fairness, Southgate has managed the unthinkable so far – lasting eight years as England manager. Since 2000, ten different managers have led England out of the tunnel into major tournaments, but with the notable exception of Eriksson’s 5 years in charge no one has come anywhere near the length of Southgate’s tenure.

It is not only about the duration of his spell as England manager though. Southgate took England to the World-Cup semi-finals in 2018, to the final of Euro 2020, lost to eventual finalists France in the quarters of the 2022 World Cup, and here we are again, in the Final of Euro 2024.

The reality is, however good a run he’s had with England, that Southgate has not won anything as a manager in professional nor international football. But can he? Has he got what it takes to win at the highest possible stage? Is this the only measure of his success?

A few years ago, we conducted a ground-breaking study looking at the characteristics and modus operandi of what we termed Serial Winning Coaches – coaches who had repeatedly won gold medals at Olympic and World Championship level or major trophies in the best pro leagues in the world. 

We were able to interview 17 serial winning coaches and their athletes. Between them they had over 180 gold medals! Three key areas appeared central to winning. First, these coaches possessed a crystal-clear vision of what they wanted to achieve and how they were going to do it. Second, serial winners had a knack for getting the right people – players and staff – on the bus, and knew how to motivate, manage and develop them in equal parts. And third, these super coaches created an optimal environment – with the appropriate level of challenge and support – where the people they had selected could realise their vision. 

So where does Southgate fare in comparison? This, of course, is impossible to know. Having incomplete knowledge and information about his ways of working as a coach, we can only speculate how he compares with what we know from our research. We can only apologise in advance for trying to look into the black box of his coaching from a distance. 

Let’s try though. 

It seems clear that he has got the environment spot on. Players appear to like playing for England and are seemingly happy with the overall conditions – the FA really pulls at all the stops in this respect. Players also seem to like each other and the staff, and no horror stories have come out of the camp since Gareth took over. 

He also seems to have got the people element right in terms of all squad members being good cultural fits, and as the New Zealand All Blacks would say, not having any “bad apples” – they use a different word for this – in the group.  Perhaps most importantly, for the first time, England seem to have a squad with plenty of world-class players capable of winning and this may have not always been the case in recent times. 

So, if people and environment seem to ball-park be in the right place, what about his vision…?

Well, from the outside, and again with the caveat of not really having all the information we would love to have, it seems the vision is what most commentators criticise Southgate for. According to the vast majority of pundits here and abroad, Southgate’s vision, especially in relation to what football experts would call his “game model”, undersells the quality and potential of his players. 

If this is true, and there is a discrepancy between what the players are capable of doing – playing aggressively and creatively with flair and panache – and what they have been asked to do – playing not to lose, playing conservatively – this could be the team’s downfall. 

It seems, however, that as the tournament as gone on, Southgate has tried to evolve the way he is setting up his team, trying to find a way to let the talent shine through instead of playing with the hand break on. Last night’s first half is testament to that. You could argue that, in that sense, Southgate has shown to be more openminded and adaptable – a serial winning characteristic – than perhaps France’s Deschamps or the Netherlands’ Koeman…

Yet the most difficult decision is yet to come… Now England are in the final, in front of them the most in-form team of the tournament, Spain – I know I’m biased – displaying their traditional possession and position-based game with the newly added weapons of a ruthless high-press and two-world class wingers. Nice.

Southgate has to decide if he continues to evolve towards a more attacking, free flowing, player-led brand of football, or if the priority for the Final is to stop Spain and hope for an opportunity to counter… or who would have thought it a few years ago… maybe even welcome a penalty shootout! 

In the end, if England win, none of this will matter. And rightly so. One of the characteristics of the serial winning coaches was that they always found a way to win, and it didn’t have to be pretty. 

Bring on the final!

To learn more about the Serial Winning Coaches project:

https://www.routledge.com/Learning-from-Serial-Winning-Coaches-Caring-Determination/Mallett-Lara-Bercial/p/book/9780367347185