I kind of agree in the sense that he has done as best as he can. His biggest achievement is that he has molded a collection of individuals into a true team and that shouldn’t be taken lightly.
That said, I also think that he has taken England as far as he can. They’ll probably never get another opportunity as good as this one to win a title. The fact that the team failed to capitalize is on him and his limitations. England have a fantastic crop of young players coming through and Southgate has set a solid foundation. But they need someone better if they are ever to take the next step.
I can’t help but imagine how much more attacking and assertive this team would be with someone like Klopp at the helm.
Calling England’s run to this final a bye is absolute nonsense. Beat a World Cup finalist in the group, beat a Germany team that itself had beaten Portugal and was arguably the better team and unlucky to lose against France in their own group (also their first knockout win against Germany since 1966), demolished a Ukraine team that admittedly was a bit patched up following a brutal game with Sweden but still was a team many were tipping as a bit of a dark horse, beat a Denmark team that was widely praised for being an excellently coached team tactically with some real quality players in midfield and attack.
I wonder if the order of the fixtures was different, say Ukraine, Denmark and then Germany people would still try to throw that criticism at them.
Klopp won us a CL final that played out in a pretty similar way to what the game did last night. I think generally he is a lot more conservative than people would like to admit at times, especially when we have taken early leads in the bigger games.
That final was also played in extreme heat which affected the quality, yet we still had more than twice as many shots as England did in 30 minutes less.
Liverpool were solid in the CL final but we didn’t retreat into our shell like England did, at no point did we lose control of the game.
The final was hardly our best performance, in fact it was an aberration from our normal game with Klopp. England’s tendency to retreat and give up all the initiative after going ahead is par for the course under Southgate.
Germany v Belgium
Croatia v Spain
Denmark v Switzerland
Czech Republic v Wales
Ukraine v Turkey
Scotland v Austria
I don’t think you can say overall that England had a massively easier road to the final than Italy. But then people will believe whatever they want to.
Southgate is undoubtedly a limited manager, maybe not a bad manager but definitely lacking in many areas
To be fair to him, he was right about leaving Grealish out of the first XI and he was right to stick with Sterling.
It’s been discussed a lot but obviously his approach is a bit too cautious.
I think England had the second best team in the tournament player for player, behind France. France have massively underperformed this year and England have, I would say, done slightly better than expected (but I reject the notion seemingly put about by many media that England are some glorious underdog - I had them as favourite in every game including the final).
Southgate… I don’t know I guess he’s about what you expect from an international manager. None are brilliant - Loew, Mancini, Deschamps etc are they great managers? No I don’t think so. I doubt England can get a significantly better manager and they’re probably better off just keeping him and hoping he learns his lessons.
I still don’t think the overall idea or approach was worlds apart though. I’m not doubting that we managed that game better than England did last night, as we should have given the fact that Liverpool team was far superior to the Spurs team it was up against and was also far superior to the England team that played last night.
That gulf in quality wasn’t there in last nights fixture. Most people were comfortable in saying Italy were the far superior team leading into the game so I’m not sure why people now want to slate Southgate for continuing with his more conservative approach against a team that was supposedly a level above England. Open up against them and you get exposed and possibly end up losing comfortably by two or three goals.
At times I do think they lost a bit of control in the game, but Italy weren’t exactly battering the door down creating absolute guilt edged chances themselves. They built up a good head of steam but I’d say England still looked relatively comfortable defensively. Their goal came from a set piece and a bit of bad luck for Pickford who made a great save beforehand. I don’t think Italy were particularly adventurous beyond the five or so minutes following their equaliser either.
Everybody acknowledged before the tournament that England’s weaknesses laid in defence and in goal, and yet by the end of the tournament England only conceded two set piece goals and the four first choice defenders were easily their best performing players along with Sterling. I’m sure he will see that as vindication in terms of the approach he has taken all tournament.
Grealish has also only taken one penalty before in his 250 odd game career and missed it. Even if he hadn’t have wanted to take the responsibility I don’t think that’s a particularly shameful act.
Call it a technicality or whatever but we didn’t lose over the 90 minutes. We were 1 appalling (Rashford) and 2 saved penalties away from winning it. I don’t agree with Southgate’s plan of containment after we scored early especially when Italy were mentally on the ropes - we should have been attempting a second to provide a cushion. But I don’t see the point of over-analysing a drawn final.
Its actually tiring knowing how this always plays out. England fans win a few games. Instead of taking it one game at a time, we get ahead of ourselves, talking constantly about the 55 year wait (gee lets add some extra burden for these young players to carry!), thinking we’ve won it before even facing Italy, who were the form team. Euro finals are tight. You have to go back to the early 90’s for scorelines to be regularly separated by more than a goal. It was always going to be a tough ask. We didn’t win on penalties. Move onto the next tournament. Its the first final in forever. Use it as a stepping stone.
Chiellini is probably an ice-cold motherfucker at the worst of times but watch his beaming smile coming out onto the pitch at the start of the game. Soaking up the occasion. It Italy don’t win, they will probably do well at the next tournament (they have a bit more of a pedigree than us). Can’t we be thinking the same? Do we have to be either so overly positive when we are winning as to add pressure to the playing group or so overly negative after a loss that the players want to almost give up on football? Do we have to constantly talk about ‘the wait’ which adds nothing but pressure? Its stupid. Find the middle ground. Like every other nation. There is always tomorrow!
This was my take as well. Being conservative in a big game to protect a lead is fine, but you have to be willing to try something when you get the ball. Especially with Kane having a tendency to drop deep and Mount being a bit out of position, for much of the game the only forward ball that was available was one to Sterling, who looked absolutely knackered by the end of the game.
The goal was scored with a cross from one FB to the other, with one of the CBs making room for the cross with an overlapping run outside Trippier. We just lost interest in trying to get players ahead of the ball after that.
It was almost Liverpool-like in style. Shame England couldn’t build on it though.
If I were Southgate, I’d definitely be taking a long hard look at what I wanted the team to achieve stylistically in the World Cup and build it towards there. I think the elements of what he wants are there already, he just needs to figure out how to sort out the attacking bits of the game.
Evolve towards what, though? I don’t see what the destination is when they play each tournament for the sake of maximizing the result of that tournament in isolation. How do they flip to making decisions that are less pragmatic and more part of a vision of improving the team? Maybe this is a product of the intense focus and expectation from media and supporters – there’s no space available for “productive failure”.
I don’t know what foundations were laid in the last 2 tournaments to build upon other than “beating us is hard”. What does evolution/iteration on that look like? How will Southgate guide that process?
