IAN HERBERT: Gareth Southgate has restored pride in the Three Lions and he would be sorely missed

A man on a stepladder was taking down the pictures England had hung around their Tivoli Hotel in Al Wakrah, and while there was sadness in that, the wall hangings were reminiscent of the brand of English Gareth Southgate has brought to the national team. .

There was an illustration of Bukayo Saka on an inflatable unicorn in one of the pool sessions at Euro 2020. There was a huge mosaic with the words ‘Our England. Our Legacy’, alongside many colored hands and images of England: the late Queen, the King, a Beefeater from the Tower of London and the Angel of the North.

This was Southgate’s hand at work, a manager who has always emphasized the diversity of the team and the way it cuts across the geographical divides of a country where so much wealth is concentrated in the south. They are the touches that will be lost if the FA’s attempts to keep him in charge are not urgent enough and England go continental again.

A man on a stepladder was seen tearing down pictures England had hung around their Tivoli Hotel in Al Wakrah after their World Cup exit.

Gareth Southgate and his team were seen leaving the hotel after their loss to France.

The grass is always greener. That is the problem of soccer. The endless, self-defeating flow means there is always the next name: a Mauricio Pochettino or a Thomas Tuchel. None of them can compare to the identity that Southgate has carved into the team, while making them tournament challengers.

It was something he said in the German city of Dortmund, right when it all started, that told you that this was going to be different. The lunatic fringe of English football had done it again, occupying various pubs around the city to sing about ‘the RAF of England’ shooting down German bombers, and he chose that moment, the eve of his first game as permanent manager in March 2017, to challenge some established thought.

“We are an island,” Southgate said that night. “We have to get off the island and learn from other places, look in the mirror and change the way we do things tactically, with our physical preparation, our style of play and our mentality.”

Though we didn’t know it then, his voice would become one of sanity, humility, and intelligence during five unimaginably difficult years for our country. Before his arrival, no English soccer manager would have answered a question about helping the team bridge national divisions caused by Brexit. Southgate did so with confidence on the eve of the 2018 World Cup semi-final against Croatia.

“Yes,” he said in the small, packed news conference room at Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium. “The opportunity to connect everyone through football and make a difference in how people feel…is even more powerful than what we’re doing with our results.”

Bukayo Saka’s illustration of an inflatable unicorn in one of the Euro 2020 pool sessions (above) was removed shortly thereafter.

Southgate has been praised for his management of the England team despite his departure

He also spoke that day about how ‘the FA’ had recruited him, immediately qualifying his words to say that it had been ‘the English FA’, demonstrating, in doing so, that England no longer saw themselves as a benchmark in football. Here was a humbler and infinitely more attractive view of the world.

His is a meritocratic team, built on hard work and creative energy, not an old boys’ club for long-serving guys no one dares challenge.

Some team members have an elite soccer academy education behind them. Others have gone through what you might call the state system of the game, the lower leagues, and that’s part of the beauty, too. It takes all kinds. The cream will rise to the top. It has also created a level of hype England hasn’t known for generations: England won six knockout games at major tournaments between 1968 and 2016. Southgate won six between 2018 and 2022.

Didier Deschamps referred to Southgate as a ‘great coach’ during an interview last Friday

Talk to the French journalists whose team is now approaching a semi-final and you’ll be surprised Southgate isn’t more of a feted character on the English side of the English Channel.

‘He’s smart. It is one of the parts of your country that we really like,” one of them observed on Monday.

Didier Deschamps seems to feel the same way. “If I understand correctly, not everyone likes him so much in his country,” he said of Southgate last Friday. He is a great trainer.