Gareth Southgate’s tenure in the English national team is on a knife edge.
Sunday’s round of 16 match against Slovakia in Gelsenkirchen could be his last game for England after almost eight years as manager. If he loses, it is almost impossible for him to continue next season, even with six months left on his contract.
Even if England reach the quarter-finals against Italy or Switzerland the following Saturday, the dynamic remains the same: a defeat before disaster, at the end of the series.
This sense of the end of an era is refreshingly new for the current England team. Only three of them – Harry Kane, Kyle Walker and John Stones – played in Roy Hodgson’s last game, the infamous defeat to Iceland that knocked England out of Euro 2016 in the first knockout game.
Most of these players have never experienced anything at international level like the boos Southgate received at the end of the goalless draw with Slovenia in Cologne on Tuesday that gave them victory in Group C. (And Southgate, who has been booed by England fans before, at Molineux and in Milan, has never had empty plastic cups thrown at him in this way, has never experienced anything like this.)
Over the last year, England players have spoken unanimously about how much they love working with Southgate and how much they want to keep him. If that is their view, they still have an opportunity from the weekend to make that happen, or at least make it more likely. However, so far at this European Championship, very little of what the players have been saying in recent weeks has been borne out on the pitch.
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But ultimately the responsibility lies with Southgate.
England’s last three tournaments have been characterised by composure, the coach steering the good ship Gazball calmly through troubled waters. Moments that would have overwhelmed previous English teams – a penalty shoot-out, a knockout match against a top team – have been mastered successfully.
Southgate celebrates England’s penalty shootout victory against Colombia in 2018 (Robbie Jay Barratt/Getty Images)
Even when things went wrong, Southgate always gave the impression that he had already set the course in advance. The system and the team for each tournament were clear from the start.
Even when England changed their formation at the last Euro 2021, it was not a ripping up of the playbook, but rather a nod to a new chapter in it. When they switched from 4-2-3-1 to 3-4-3 for the match against Germany in the round of 16, it was a switch that had been planned for years, with Southgate cursing the 2018 World Cup because England had no tactical plan B.
Of course, Southgate faces criticism for sticking too tightly to his pre-determined plans and failing to regain control of the ship when the wheels start to turn, such as against Croatia in the 2018 World Cup semi-final or Italy in the Euro final three years ago. Sometimes small but historic details have counted against him, such as Marcus Rashford’s penalty in the shootout against Italy at Wembley when Gianluigi Donnarumma jumped the other way, or Kane’s shot over the bar against France when they were 2-1 down late in the 2022 World Cup quarter-finals.
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And yet it all feels a long way from the situation England find themselves in today. Because in those tournaments, England had a plan and stuck to it, for better or for worse. But now, for the first time since Southgate replaced Sam Allardyce in the autumn of 2016, it is not clear what the plan is.
England were so poor for much of the Euro 2024 group stage that it is difficult to have much faith in the country’s future. The good ship Gazball, so calm and majestic in the past, now looks as though it has a hole beneath the waterline. If Southgate does not want to go down with her, he will have to make emergency repairs to keep himself afloat. He has never been in this position before.
All is not lost: England have a very good defensive record, conceding just one goal in their three group matches and allowing very few chances. They have experienced players and game-changing attacking talent, at least in theory. And they are in the easier half of the round of 16 draw. Despite all this, they are still the bookies’ favourites to win the tournament. The road to victory seems narrower than it was at the start of the tournament 11 days ago, but it is still ahead of them.
What is currently worrying England so much, however, is the magnitude of the issues the country is grappling with.
This is not about simple personnel draws like at the World Cup 18 months ago (Raheem Sterling or Rashford? Phil Foden or Bukayo Saka?), but about the fundamental questions of how they want to play: Do they want to press high or be compact and difficult to beat? Does Kane lead the line as a number 9 or play as a number 10 with runners behind him? Is Jude Bellingham a number 10? Is Foden? Do they intend to use the left side of the pitch? Is there anyone Who can provide the right balance in midfield in their 26-man squad?
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We could go on like this all day. The group stage has raised enough questions to keep us all busy for years to come. (And here’s another: will future generations look back on the Slovenia game as one of the most awful 0-0 tournaments ever, like Algeria 2010 or Slovakia 2016, or one of the more forgivable, like Scotland 2021 or USA 2022?) But England travel from their Blankenhain base to Gelsenkirchen in a few days, and there is not enough time for Southgate to get back to his basic principles before then.
What Southgate needs if he doesn’t want to go under is some short-term solutions. It’s easy to dismiss band-aid solutions, but this may be the only way to stop England taking on more water. Bobby Robson did it at the 1986 and 1990 World Cups, and at the latter England only went down to penalties before the final. There’s no point planning for the distant future when you may be in the last-chance situation.
Bellingham has yet to show his Real Madrid form for England this summer (Stefan Matzke/Getty Images)
So what would these corrections look like?
It seems imperative that Kobbie Mainoo starts, given how confident he looked with the ball as a half-time substitute on Tuesday. He is one of the few English midfielders who has given his team-mates a boost.
There will be arguments for leaving Bellingham or Saka out of the squad, or perhaps even Kane or Declan Rice. No player should be untouchable, but it could be that Saka is deployed on the left, playing where no Englishman has played so far this tournament. At least one of Cole Palmer and Anthony Gordon should also come in and provide some of the confidence and ingenuity that everyone else lacks.
Given the situation England finds itself in, Southgate can be bold.
This is very different from his single change for the round of 16 at Euro 2020 and in Qatar, a subtle and targeted adjustment to address a specific problem. But we are no longer in the age of fine-tuning. These are emergency repairs to save the ship.
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(Top photo: Ryan Pierse – UEFA via Getty Images)
