Not Gareth Southgate

Admin July 14, 2024

0 0 3 minutes read

FROM THE OLYMPIASTADION, BERLIN: You felt like this time it could be different. But then again, he does. England.

England lost their second successive European Championship final at Berlin’s Olympiastadion to arguably their strongest, and best, squad. Spain became the first team to win all seven matches in the tournament. There can be no conflicts.

Gareth Southgate is left wondering what could have been. Three years ago defeat came from missed penalties at home but signs of the same failure as that night at Wembley were evident here. England, falls to a team that knows better how to control football games. Adding salt to the wound is seeing Giorgio Chiellini, who is hot on the heels of Euro 2020 by pulling Bukayo Saka’s collar, take the trophy out on stage for Spain to collect.

It was Chiellini’s Italy that improved England three years ago and his former teammate Alvaro Morata of Spain did the same in Berlin. England reached the final in a different way, one depending on the times, the atmosphere, hanging in there and presenting with some intelligence more than anything else.

Cole Palmer was even able to provide that moment on Sunday night. But it came quickly.

England and Southgate’s practice of moving and giving control to better technical teams with established ownership is also expensive. England found a way back into the game after falling behind a short time later but went back to the tape and were punched again as time expired. They took a hit and didn’t have enough time to recover.

Harry Symeou and Scott Saunders reacted to England’s loss in the Euro 2024 final, from Berlin. Click the link to view & subscribe to the 90 minute YouTube channel.

Southgate says now is not the time to make a decision about his future as a manager, but he feels now is the perfect time for those outside to look at this as a project and a lesson.

But that’s okay. Southgate may have failed to put an end to those (now 58 going on to 60) injury-plagued years but where he took England is also a story to be respected and remembered.

He has been in the senior position in England for almost eight years, 11 in the national team as a whole. He succeeded Stuart Pearce as manager of the under-21 team in August 2013 and played a key role before taking on a major role in changing the face of English football.

And when you look at what he walked into when he got the big job was a team that had already lost to Iceland with 300,000 people at Euro 2016 and the shortest reign of any England manager in history just before him, they came as a surprise. a long way.

There were even pints of wine talk. Remember that England?

Southgate has done an amazing job of bringing English football together. Building confidence in fans and players. Breaking mental barriers like those shooting demons that keep haunting them. There is a mental toughness in this group that was not there before. There is a generation of players who will have a hard time breaking the duck and one day they will. You don’t know them.

It just couldn’t be this time, either. And maybe it’s the right time for Southgate to step aside and allow the next person to take over this team, try and develop a habit of playing controlled football like their last two opponents who have been able to walk around the mountain of good things Gareth Southgate. brought it to modern England.

Time is raw and reactions will be intense. But England is on a journey that is yet to reach its end. Southgate has more than played his part in the evolution, even if it is his time to move on.