World Cup: Gareth Southgate has made the impossible look possible and England can have a real crack

We talked about relevance. How the impossible job became one that Mauricio Pochettino or Thomas Tuchel would love to walk into tomorrow.

How a team that seemed to have bottomed out six years ago was rehabilitated into one of the strongest in tournament football. And because Gareth Southgate is not a conventional England manager in so many ways, he approached the subject from a wholly original angle.

“I remember during the Black Lives Matter protests there was this fantastic comedian who said, ‘all we ask is that we matter, nothing more,'” Southgate recalled. And maybe we just made the impossible possible, that would be the analogy. Maybe we made it exciting for other people and I can understand that.’

And because nothing beats the rush of judgment in the modern age, Southgate’s employers were very nervous that his words might be misinterpreted, that he could be accused of downplaying a serious matter.

So for the record, Southgate wasn’t saying managing England was life or death, or drawing comparisons between a game and a global protest movement born of death and righteous anger. He knows what it’s about. He knows where his role lies. But relevance, yes, he understands that.

In his sphere of influence, he has changed perceptions, changed the way the rest of the world sees the England team and his position as their coach. Would Pochettino, Tuchel or their contemporaries have coveted the England manager’s job when Southgate took charge in 2016?

Think of the leading foreign coaches in and around English football at the time: Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, Arsène Wenger, Louis van Gaal, Antonio Conte, Ronald Koeman, Pochettino. Were they fighting for an interview when Sam Allardyce walked out?

England had just left a tournament to Iceland. The reason the Football Association promoted Southgate was that they didn’t have too many options beyond that. He has since helped put together two of the most credible tournament performances in English football history. His colleagues now look at his team and see their opportunities.

Some would argue that this is a poor reflection of Southgate. That the reason Pochettino or Tuchel would take on the national role is that they believe it can be done better.

If so, it won’t be easy. No England manager had reached a European Championship final and only one predecessor had gone as far as Southgate in a World Cup on foreign soil.

So, while his successor will think, another victory and holiness equally awaits, Southgate would have every reason to ask them: Where were you when we were s***?

That is, even if he found a unique way to explain it – Kevin Hart is not a traditional point of reference for English managers, and he also slipped into a little French by using the phrase ‘plus approx changein regards to rising expectations – Southgate knows what he’s done.

If this is his farewell tournament, as many suspect, he will leave England in a much better place than he found it. There is a united spirit, a production line of promising young players and an older group with a lot of experience. It’s a good job now and Southgate made it that way.

“We want England to remain competitive for years to come and I believe our academy system has done that,” he added.

But it’s not just national team relevance that’s at stake when England’s World Cup kicks off in Al Rayyan on Monday. This is a World Cup with image problems.

The FA confirms that only 3,000 members of the English travel club will come to Qatar, which is the minimum allocation for away supporters at a Premier League stadium with a capacity of 30,000 or more.

At home, sellers are reporting a quieter time than usual. There is a marked absence of St George Cross flags on the streets and sticker madness on the playgrounds, with disgust at the overriding emotion of a World Cup forged on corruption, controversy, modern day slavery and death.

The sourness continued on Sunday with the revelation that FIFA had spent their waking hours checkingmate the teams planning rainbow bracelet protests in support of the gay community.

Such a lenient gesture of acknowledgment – homosexuality remains illegal in Qatar – would only offend the truly intolerant, but despite President Gianni Infantino attacking LGBTQ solidarity in his egotistical speech on Saturday, FIFA seems to have found a way to throw shade at to cast the rainbow.

The threat of a captain wearing the OneLove armbands being cautioned before kick-off is a serious challenge. It would take Harry Kane, Gareth Bale and others out of the third group game and several knockout matches, maybe even the final.

The football association will not want to lose face over this, but the risk-reward in the gesture threatens to dismantle the entire campaign.

FIFA will come out very badly here, if it happens. What does it say about them and about Infantino’s empty words? A tournament already suffering in the eyes of the public would sink even further.

Southgate acknowledges this. It’s not often an England manager needs to remind his players of the significance of representing England at a tournament, but then again this is still going to be a World Cup like no other.

Luiz Felipe Scolari took charge of Portugal in 2003 and felt players like Deco, who was born in Brazil, were at a distance from the group. He put together videos that reinforced the kinship and showed the Brazilian public celebrating Portuguese victories as if they were their own.

Southgate didn’t have to resort to extreme motivation, but confirmed on Sunday that his first job was to make sure his players didn’t feel too detached from the tournament.

“What we’ve tried to do over the last seven days is get them excited about going to a World Cup and that’s balanced with the topics they have to discuss which are very serious,” he explained.

“There is a lot of negativity around the tournament and I want them to understand the unique honor of representing England in a major competition.

This is what they’ve wanted to do all their lives. We tried to address those things, to make it special. We talk. We remind ourselves of the privilege of being here and the uniqueness of it. Only 16 English teams have ever been to a World Cup.

Many of the staff and players are second, Raheem Sterling third. You need to remind yourself of this moment in time. Tournament football is different. Germany has always been the best example of this.

“It’s hard to talk about form because in international football you always have two months between matches, so what is form anyway? What is there is pedigree.

‘We want to be Germany. I looked at their Wikipedia page. World Cups: four gold, four silver, four bronze. European Championships: three golds, three silvers, three bronzes.

Our page didn’t quite look like this. I would love it if that were the case in 40 years and that should be our goal, to be consistently challenging. That’s how we should be, really.’

To that end, the game with Iran is an opportunity to gain momentum. Carlos Queiroz’s team is not crazy, but the country has not progressed beyond the first round or group stage at any World Cup.

It also seems likely that Southgate will go with four in the back, which is his lineup when faced with a winable tournament match. Queiroz is realistic.

“England are serious candidates for a medal position, candidates to become world champions,” he said. “They have a fantastic team with talents and a coach who knows them. For the majority of our players to play against England is magic.

‘Especially for them, especially for us, it gives life. I think this is the most competitive team in England since 1966. I worked with Paul Scholes, with David Beckham, but this team is more functional, more realistic. It’s very different from before, their approach, and it makes them dangerous.’

This is the England that Southgate created. It’s not always pretty, it doesn’t always win him friends – and he’s booed when things go wrong, as he’s considered overly cautious – but his mix of youthful courage and pragmatism has brought the national team back to relevance.

Maybe Qatar 2022 too, if the public keeps their noses up as England progress. And if he can change the image of this cursed tournament, he really will be The One.