Gareth Southgate resigns – an opinion piece

Yesterday saw the unsurprising announcement that Gareth Southgate had resigned from his role as England manager.

Southgate was one of England’s best managers, second only to Sir Alf Ramsey, who won the World Cup in 1966. Despite reaching two European Championships finals and a World Cup semi final, fans became tired of his rather uninspiring football and weren’t shy in vocalising this.
After the goalless draw against Slovenia in the final group stage, some fans threw plastic beers cups at him at full time. Social media has been rife with complaints throughout Southgate’s tenure bemoaning his style of play and tactics, provoking fans and former payers to take to the keyboard.

Southgate wasn’t the first England manager to receive vitriolic abuse, with Sir Bobby Robson and Graham Taylor both on the receiving end of some awful behaviour from both the fans and press. His teams didn’t play fast attacking football that was craved by many, but ground out results.

It was often said that England were “lucky” throughout the tournament and perhaps rightly so. We needed two last-minute equalisers and a penalty shootout to reach the final, but this has been the case before in England’s not-too-distant past.
At Italia ’90 – the tournament that England fans still look back on with rose-tinted glasses – Bobby Robson’s side drew against the Dutch and Irish and scraped a 1-0 win against Egypt. They required a last-minute goal from David Platt against Belgium and came back twice against Cameroon to reach the semi final.
At Euro ’96, Switzerland held England to a dull 1-1 draw in the tournament opener and Spain had two perfectly good goals ruled out in the Quarter Final.

During Gareth Southgate’s eight years in charge, he held an impressive record. England won 61 of the 102 games that he took charge of with 24 draws and only 17 defeats. The real success that will forever be remembered is the runs in the 2021 and 2024 European Championships and the 2018 World Cup.

What now for England? Names such as Eddie Howe, Jurgen Klopp, Graham Potter, Thomas Tuchel and Mauricio Pochettino have been suggested and for me, Jurgen Klopp has to get the nod.
Klopp’s style of football will be great for the national team and his character lit up the Premier League when he was in charge of Liverpool.

I think that Graham Potter and Eddie Howe will be of a similar ilk to Southgate and are the only possible English candidates. The FA took a lot of convincing from David Dein to appoint Sven Goran Eriksson at the start of the millennium. Fabio Cappello couldn’t emulate the successes that he had in club football, but it could easily be third time lucky for a foreign coach if Klopp is the man to take this team forward.

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