OLIVER HOLT: Gareth Southgate’s England have a plan, an identity, a purpose. We should celebrate that… not nitpick

Last week I spent a few days in Marseille, around an English rugby team that lacks confidence, is plagued by an inconsistent squad, is hampered by doubts about the captain’s discipline and influence, and is taking its time to respond to a new coach and struggles to establish any kind of identity.

Steve Borthwick’s side responded brilliantly to all the criticism aimed at them by outsmarting and beating Argentina in their opening World Cup match at the Stade Velodrome on Saturday evening, especially as they had to play 77 minutes of the match with 14 men .

But even though the victory paved the way to the quarter-finals, a whole host of problems remain. All their resistance couldn’t hide the fact that they are an ordinary side with ball in hand, a side that has fallen far behind tournament favorites France, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa.

That’s an English team with problems. That’s an England team that still has a lot of work to do to climb out of mediocrity. That’s an England team that is currently a million miles away from realistic dreams of winning the World Cup or reigning supreme in the Six Nations again.

And so, in the hour before England kicked off in Marseille, it felt even stranger than usual to see the barrage of criticism of England’s football manager, Gareth Southgate, pouring in on social media… for his team’s away match against Ukraine had played in Wroclaw in Poland.

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Ahead of Tuesday’s 150th anniversary match against Scotland in Glasgow, this is an England side, remember, who have now played five games in the qualifying group for next year’s European Championships, won four and has drawn one, scored sixteen goals and conceded two. .

This is an English team that defeated Italy in its stronghold of Naples in the spring. This is an England team that reached the final of the last European Championships, lost on penalties, and was knocked out of the World Cup last year by a French side that many considered the best team in the tournament.

This is an England team that has underperformed for years – decades actually – under previous managers of greater repute, but has finally started to realize its potential under Southgate and is now overachieving.

This is a team with a plan, a purpose and a clear identity. This is a team that has already almost qualified for the 2024 European Championship in Germany and that will go to the tournament as one of the favorites with the ambition to win it, which is not based on fantasy, but on having a whole host of wonderfully talented players. players and abundant evidence of evolution and progress under the manager.

So even if the performance in Wroclaw was a bit poor, a draw away against the players of a country that plays with much more than just a desire to win football matches in their hearts, a draw that took England to the brink of qualification is hardly cause for mourning.

The desire to see James Maddison start in a more central position after the impressive impact he has made early in his Spurs career this season is shared by most of us. This also applies to the desire to see Phil Foden start more regularly and have more influence.

But Southgate is building a team here, not a collection of Instagram accounts. It would be nice to start Maddison, Foden, Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford, Jack Grealish and Harry Kane in the same squad, but it probably wouldn’t get you many football games, especially with England’s defence.

I also enjoy watching Foden, but Pep Guardiola only selected him in the starting line-up for just over half of Manchester City’s games last season.

That appears to be changing this season and the hope is that it will change for England too. However, there is no need to scold Southgate for this. Teams evolve quickly in a tournament year. It would be a surprise if he doesn’t give Foden more and more prominence as the euro approaches.

Critics often talk about Southgate as if he is holding England back, but almost every piece of evidence suggests that he is actually liberating England.

The evidence suggests that we should not worry about him staying too long – as Micah Richards did this week – but rather worry about what happens when he leaves.

Getting the best out of players for their national teams as club power grows and grows is an increasingly complicated alchemy and Southgate has succeeded where many more celebrated and high-profile managers before him failed.

The last time we saw an English manager have the same impact, the last time we saw English players respond to a manager in this way, was when Terry Venables was in charge and we lost him far too early. The FA were smart enough not to make that mistake with Southgate.

Playing Jordan Henderson in Wroclaw was the latest way to beat Southgate, but it is nothing new. Even when he was in his prime for Liverpool and captaining the Champions League, Southgate was ridiculed for picking him.

It is likely that he will slip out of the starting line-up before the European Championship anyway. That will be partly to do with his move to a less competitive league in Saudi Arabia, but more to do with the accumulated claims of Foden, Declan Rice, Jude Bellingham and Trent Alexander-Arnold, who have youth and a stunning array of ball game skills. in their advantage.

Everything indicates that England will go into Euro 24 as second favorites, behind France, to win the European Championship. All indications are that this is the country’s best chance to win a major men’s football competition since 1966.

It might help the process if we could give the manager credit along the way where it’s needed, instead of looking for problems where there aren’t any.

Tennis has sold its privacy

It was easy to agree with Judy Murray when she wrote that footage of Aryna Sabalenka smashing her racket in the privacy of the locker room after her loss to Coco Gauff in the women’s singles final at the US Open last weekend was not shown should have been.

Only it has now emerged that there was a camera crew from Netflix in the room to film it all clearly. Sabalenka knew they were there. She could hardly miss them.

There was therefore no question of a violation of her privacy. That’s the irony of reality shows: the ‘reality’ they show is often not quite what it seems.

Novak Djokovic’s victory over Daniil Medvedev in the US Open men’s singles final on Sunday night was the final triumph of the autumn of a quite astonishing career.

Djokovic suffered for so long in the shadow of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, but he has outlasted and surpassed them both. He is now tied with Margaret Court with 24 Grand Slam singles victories as the most decorated tennis player of all time.

It may be too late, but for his longevity, for his mental strength, his resilience and the brilliance of his playing, he deserves all the love and all the praise that comes his way.

It was an easy choice for the best performance I saw this weekend. George Ford was masterful in England’s back-to-the-wall victory over Argentina on Saturday.

Sometimes it’s easy to lose brains in the thick of the game, but Ford’s intelligence (not to mention his brilliant kicking) dominated the match.

England played smarter than they have for a long time, with him acting as a general.

Even if it means not recalling his friend Owen Farrell, coach Steve Borthwick must continue to give Ford the platform to run the show if England are to have a chance of reaching the semi-finals of this tournament or beyond.