Former England manager Gareth Southgate has revealed he has turned to music to help him cope with the heartbreak of leaving the job.
The 54-year-old stepped down after eight years in the role following England’s 2-1 defeat to Spain in the Euro 24 final in July.
But it wasn’t football songs Three Lions or Vindaloo he was listening to. It was an Adele love song.
Southgate, tipped to be knighted in the New Year Honours, says he played her hit ‘Someone Like You’ on repeat after deciding to quit.
On today’s Desert Island Discs he tells host Lauren Laverne: ‘I kept playing it towards the end of the Euros because I knew I was going to leave. I had made up my mind.’
In the 2011 hit, Adele sings: ‘Nothing compares, no worries or worries, regrets and mistakes, they’re memories made. Who could have predicted how bittersweet this would taste?’
Gareth Southgate turned to music to help him through the heartbreak of leaving his role as England manager
Southgate revealed that towards the end of his tenure he was regularly playing Adele’s 2011 hit ‘Someone Like You’
Southgate says that although the song is about the end of a love affair, every time he heard it played it would remind him of his role with England.
“There are so many words in there that, even when I hear them today, relate to my relationship with England and their relationship with me and how I feel about that,” he reveals.
‘She [the lover in the song] You have to move on, and you wish them well and there are regrets, but it’s actually memories that are made.
‘There are so many lines in it that really appeal to me.’
The father-of-two, who chose the song as one of his eight castaways, is known to be a huge Adele fan and appeared in the star’s An Audience With… at the London Palladium in 2021.
Southgate is now adjusting to life away from football and says he has no plans to become a ‘backseat’ manager when his successor Thomas Tuchel takes over in the new year.
“That chapter in my life is now closed,” he says. ‘It will always stay with me. There will always be a part that is difficult to give up and I also had to realize that the team now has to move on and I have to give them as much space as possible.’
He added: “I’m sure there will be times in the future where I’m quoted about the team, but I’m going to try to avoid that as much as possible. I would never want to get in the way.”
Since leaving, he reveals, he has consulted other public figures on how they were dealing with major changes in their own lives, but he declines to name his advisers.
Southgate cheered on fans after England lost 2-1 to Spain in the UEFA Euro 2024 final
He says: ‘I have been a player and coach for 37 years and I am not opposed to the next period of my life being something completely different.’
Southgate, whose selection includes songs by U2, Ed Sheeran and Stormzy, also says he has no regrets about the controversy caused by England players taking the knee before matches.
“I alienated people who supported me for that,” he says. ‘But I thought it was an important message for young people.’
l Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds today at 10am.