Sir Gareth Southgate: There were days I didn’t want to get out from under the duvet

0:02This is a Global Player original podcast.

0:12Hello and welcome to Full Disclosure, a podcast project conceived entirely to let me spend more time with interesting people than I would ever get on the radio. Although, to be fair, Sir Gareth Southgate, in your case we probably would have made an exception on the radio show. um here's a first i had to get up early this morning because we're recording this before um normal business and uh my wife asked who i was getting out of bed early for i said gary southgate and she said without even pausing tell him i love him which has never which has never i mean you can look at the list of people who've sat in that chair before and she's never done it anything like that before so i obviously said why forgive me that's a fair question and she said he's he's so honorable he's so decent he's saved football and the way he looked after those young men is absolutely extraordinary and i didn't know she knew all that because she's not the world's biggest football fan by any stretch of the imagination when did you realize that you'd sort of crossed out of the world of football into something rather different well some interactions like you've just mentioned really and actually very often ladies of a certain age but I think quite often with children and particularly with young boys so I think you know I think as a nation probably across the world we're thinking a lot about what's going on with young boys and the need for good role models and the need for certain standards and I suppose the beauty of being in football all my life is that I always had a coach I was able to help take young lads on that journey um as they develop through their teenage years late teens especially um yeah and i i guess unintentionally we were also thrown into some situations with the team that meant we ended up talking about different things so i think the national team is different to club football you know it is a bit of a mirror on the country and um it's the occasions where everybody comes together to to watch generationally though you could have gone the other way couldn't you i mean right on the cusp of people who are encouraged and are comfortable to talk about what's going on inside and people who were absolutely allergic to it you know our father's generation would not not really go there some exceptions of course so when you were coming up through through through the ranks i mean i presume that it was still a fairly primitive environment yeah i was smiling there because i was just thinking about what we've been discussing and then thinking what my upbringing at crystal palace was like yeah no definitely look at football is a very masculine uh alpha world um in those days the game itself was much more combative in this country than it is now and um yeah I was not intentionally brought up to keep my emotions in check but I would have followed the examples of my dad and my grandfather and so I think inherently you you took that view but I guess as I got older um particularly when you're leading people I I recognize that I think people do react well to some vulnerability.

3:34And over the years, I've had several interactions with the armed forces, and they've talked about that. And that really surprised me, because you'd think that would be somewhere where that was impossible. Of course. And yet, then you open your eyes a little bit, and you say, no, actually, men everywhere. There are different sides to all of us. There's this image of what it might be, or this perception of what it should be. But the reality is we all go through an incredible range of emotions every day. And not necessarily an environment in which you'd start shouting it from the rooftops from a very early age, but you mentioned leadership and the new book, Dear England, Lessons in Leadership is fairly self-explanatory.

4:15But you were 13, I think, when your PE teacher or your football coach spotted that you were captain material or possibly even younger. Steve Avery was the teacher at the time. That's an extraordinarily young age. for somebody to think that you have leadership skills. What do you think he saw? Well, I mean, I think when you're a young player, normally they give the better player the armband. But also I was probably a bit more sensible than some of the others. I mean, it wasn't a... But what was interesting is that I think then that takes you into situations where you do then have to impact the rest of the group.

4:54you are tasked with small responsibilities of looking after the opposition and then in the middle of games, can you do things on the pitch that inspire the rest of the team and then how do you talk to the rest of the team when things go well or things don't go well. So, yeah, I think you find yourself in positions that allows you to develop leadership. But that came naturally to you then. Elements of it must have done. Well, some elements did, but I'm quite an introvert, really. So, you know, I mean, I'm now at 55, very comfortable going into any environment just because of the life experiences I've had.

5:33Yeah. But when people say that leaders are born, I wouldn't actually agree with that. I think the experiences we have through our life put us in situations that allow yourself to develop. and um i could because i've seen so many different personalities that have led well in but in different ways so there's no identikit kind of cookie cutter i don't leadership template i don't think so i mean i've got a preference because it is my personality and you know one of the things i explain in the book is that i've seen other people with a completely different approach achieve success you know i think you've got to be authentic to yourself as a leader because people will smell it a mile off if you're not being natural.

6:21And, yeah, I think that's as important as anything else. I think for football fans of our age, I don't know why, but the words Brian Clough just appeared in my mind. Very big letters in the back of my mind. So, I mean, much of this, most of this probably started at home, which was Watford in Hertfordshire. Your family's always been described as close-knit, although you're not just an introvert are you you're actually quite a private man i know your parents names and i know that your dad works his way up from being a builder i think to being a manager at ibm it it struck me preparing for this conversation i've had a lot of actors in lately and it struck me that there are similarities in in the sense that that that putting all or nothing on a slightly fairy tale career from quite a young age it's the same for actors and a lot of parents would be like um i don't know about that son they certainly want you to have a backup or a safety net so what was the relationship from quite a young age between your talent and your future at home yeah definitely i mean i've i have that conversation with other parents now yes particularly some parents in a friendship group of mine that have got kids who are actors and oh really and they have that very they have that very conversation exactly the same right yeah you know my my mum would have been immediately thinking not many people make it um i guess we're always thinking about what might go wrong um you know i was doing reasonably well at school but i you know i had this point at 16 where you either go for it take what was an apprenticeship at the time um or you stay on take a levels and go a different route um but i definitely felt that that was a point at which you've got to throw yourself into it full time um kids nowadays in all of these talent pathways football acting dancing music they probably have to commit even earlier than that which is something that worries me um because i think we they're so young and they don't know all the pitfalls and we build their hopes up so much um but i know that making that commitment at that point meant there was no life raft and um that doesn't mean that was the reason i got through because a lot of kids committed in the same way and didn't quite get there um but there are so many steps along the way that these things can go wrong so of course when i see um youngsters that are achieving these things you realize so difficult to get through um all the stages to be a sports person there's something so poignant about those photos isn't there of like an under 16 team when four or five of them have gone on to be household names like massive stars we're thinking of united which was a chartered team or a club like that and then four or five of them did had good careers and then there's always two or three who went absolutely nowhere and it could have been any definitely well part of my role with england before i took the first team was working with all the age group teams from us so you could have under 17 international players so the best in our country and I used to go and talk to them and the parents and we'd have a meeting and we'd say look it's brilliant what you've achieved you you should be so proud of your son and boys you should be so proud to be here but I've got to tell you there's a reality here that some of you won't even have a career in professional football even though they're the best at that age group and and that is the reality you know you in any year group with england maybe three or four would get through to the seniors some would have a career in the game and some you know some will get an injury some will fall out of love with the game some will just be rejected and not be able to bounce back from that disappointment um so yeah it's it's tough sports life challenges all you've had all of those moments along the way where I'm sure you've had days where you thought, no, it's not for me, I've had enough of this.

10:36And now you are where you are and people will think, well, what an amazing life. But it's hard along that way. Can you tell? I mean, do you get inklings about the lads who are not going to make it? Or is it as much of a surprise to you as it is to them? yeah that's a great question because some with some players it becomes apparent i mean for example if you think about the players that make it yeah there are some obvious talents that are so good yeah that they just stand out um but you do get you know i had harry kane as a 18 year old he'd been on loan three times he was really struggling to break into late in orient's team leicester you knew he had ability but I could never have said he'd be England's record goal scorer in 10-15 years so his resilience his desire to keep learning to keep improving to bounce back from those setbacks definitely resilience and this you know he now has a mindset of trying to master what he does whereas some lads the heartache of rejection or injury and the disappointment or or it's at an age where 16 17 18 which are really important years for developing in professional sport the brain's still rewiring you know they might be in with the wrong group of friends they might not have the support at home um and the opportunity can be gone in a couple of years and then you know then they're onto something different got it back um speaking of support at home you've mentioned that your mum would have been quite sanguine about the dangers of the career.

12:19What about your dad? Were you in any sense sort of living his dream? Was he the kind of football crazy? No, I mean, he did play football when he was younger, but he was on Luton Towns books as a kid, but there was no money in football. So he took the other option. He took a career that he knew he'd have a skill. um he no i was fortunate he was always supportive but never pushy um and of course again when i started playing there wasn't life-changing money you know football was well paid but you were still i started on you need to do something afterwards you did yeah yeah absolutely and um so it wasn't as if whatever i earned might change the family's life which is the case now for youngsters um so i was allowed to develop a in a supportive environment but if you know if he stood on the touchline he would you'd never hear him shouting he'd just quietly watch him when did you when do you think because i mean every 11 year old boy wants to be a footballer when they grow up but but i mean when did when do you think looking back because you wouldn't have known at the time that that became a realistic prospect for you yeah it it wasn't realistic until 15 16 yeah and by that point I'd already been released by Southampton what was that like?

13:42well heartbreaking at the moment it happened a bit impersonal you just got a letter through the post there was no sort of meeting but yeah when I look back although the dream was to be a footballer I didn't have any awareness of the realities of what that journey was going to be at that point. And it was only when I really, when I left school, went into full-time training, you're suddenly in this men's environment where people are playing for their livelihoods. They need the win bonus to pay the mortgage. So it's that sudden shift from, this is a game I'm playing for fun with my mates to, no, this is a job.

14:30And it's a very different mindset. So this is doing a YTS at Palace, isn't it? Yeah. yeah and I really struggled with that did you adaptation yeah I had to get two trains to get to the training ground before I was able to drive um yeah I was physically a late developer I was psychologically a bit soft okay um so I had a lot of toughening up to do when I was 16 17 yeah it didn't help that you turned up in um a shirt and tie maybe not a tie that's probably a bit no i went no time but i did i did i turned up first day in my school uniform because i thought well you know i guess you've got to be smart on your first day and of course everybody else was in tracksuit so yeah to say problems fitting in at the start would be very fair

15:16i'm always fascinated by people whose external demeanor is is quite in control like you i mean we've used the word sensible but obviously below the surface you can be churning it's just the fact that it's not immediately obvious but probably back to leadership as well is that you want somebody who can control themselves before you can expect them to exercise control over other people so so there's sort of two things there isn't there there's the there's the heartbreak of being let go by Southampton and then there's the little thing about feeling embarrassed and exposed when you turn up in your school uniform these things cut deep for kids but it wouldn't be something that necessarily everybody around you would have known or noticed no definitely I mean I think when when some of the lads were dressing up in my gear and had a pair of my shoes on dancing in the dress room everybody would have noticed that but um but you know they wouldn't I don't think you realize how that tears up a youngster inside and of course that can really affect people yeah in the other way i i had an embarrassment i just knew i needed to change my shoes wear some different gear but um but you know they are character forming moments really where um you you learn there's there's something about learning it learned emotional intelligence isn't there how do you fit in with a group or how do you not stand out too far from a group and and i have tremendous admiration for people who think a bit differently yeah and actually don't worry as much as i might have done then about fitting in you know they're prepared to be independent some of them will be probably among the most creative people in our world um and i think that shows tremendous confidence to be able to do that you've i would say that you've achieved that is it is it something you aim for i mean did you watch look at people like that and aspire to be more like that No, I think that's something that I'm sort of observing at this point of my life because I never really, I always wanted to be the person that my parents brought me up to be in terms of manners, respect for people.

17:32definitely when I was being the manager I realized the responsibility of the role you're a figurehead what you say carries weight you are representing your country in every press conference at every match at every event you attend so I felt there was an important part of being a role model in that role I had because it it has reach and it has impact on everybody really you know but you also danced to your own tune most obviously when when you wrote the dear england letter which was an enormous departure from what previous football managers in general leaders in general had done in that kind of context so that speaks to a knowledge of the importance of breaking out of the parameters of expectation yeah i think it was a consequence of a time we were going through um and possibly still are going through um as a team we had been involved in a couple of nights where our players had experienced racism and you know i hadn't fully sat and reflected on not only what that the importance of how we dealt with that as a team going into those situations but also what those boys must have lived through for 20-25 years before not the over obvious things but you know the the um the day-to-day experiences that um that I never had to think about and um so yeah again with the the letter which came from an interview I did with the football website yeah the intention of it was just to talk about my pride in being English how I felt that is different from my grandfather's generation to our generation but that you know regardless of the fact we had a lot of boys who were proud of their Nigerian roots or Jamaican roots but so proud to play for England you know you see that now with Mauro Itoji the England rugby captain and the world is more fluid in that way you know our kids it's much easier for them if they want to go and travel and live abroad um as generations pass i think society will be more fluid so um so i think we are grappling a little bit with what what our modern identity is it was more obvious for a generation my parents who lived through a war and came through all of that now now we're in a different time and um but i i just know that my experiences with the team where we brought people together you get nan watching you get kids watching you get every community watching people are proud to be english and and there's a lot more that unites us than divides us actually that's a lovely thought and and i agree but it's sometimes difficult to um see the road ahead as opposed to the pothole that we're currently in or the bumps that we're currently trying to get over you mentioned travel we should probably reflect briefly upon the words of alan smith who suggested that um this is while you're still at palace that you might have might want to consider a career as a travel agent because they were they were 50 50 on whether or not they were going to take you on to the next level or not so so again another bump in the road another slap in the face this one hit you quite hard as well i think yeah i mean that that was that period i was referring to earlier where i struggled adapting from school to work um and i didn't make my full debut for palace i didn't really break into the team until 21 that's that's pretty late um and i didn't play for england until i was 25 so but i've i've always been a little bit of a late you know late developer had to prove myself thicker i mean physically yeah yeah yeah yeah hard to get thicker in any other way but yeah but um yeah you know i think i've always i think what that has done is it's built resilience in me and I've always had to prove myself I've never been that sort of obvious talent that I talked about earlier and and so I had to be committed in a different way because I wasn't good enough to get through without having those other attributes and and you I mean to knit those two thoughts together that the one you said earlier about spotting the talents that are extraordinary and knowing that you're not one of them but that you could develop attributes that they didn't necessarily have there's quite and this obviously for the football geeks who've tuned in there's quite a seminal moment when you lined up against your former club against Southampton and Alan Shearer was leading the line and I think they thumped you 6-0 and you can watch him and think crikey he's got the mercury or he's got the magic definitely I mean he I think he scored a hat-trick on his debut for Southampton I think and he was 17-18 when he got into their team.

22:28So you do see those players. We had people like Saka in the first team at 19, Bellingham at 17, Foden at 18. So you can spot those players. But nevertheless, they're then going to have other pitfalls along the way that life throws at you to deal with. And Smith kind of changed his mind relatively quickly while you're putting in this level of effort. And I don't know how seminal this was, but sticking you, putting you quite close to Ray Wilkins at one point, who of course had Captain Dingland. That must have, I mean, a big age gap there as well, but I imagine quite influential, quite seminal. Brilliant.

23:14I mean, I think in fairness to Alan Smith, he saw the potential in me, which was why he said the things he said to try and trigger a response. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, but I knew he also had care because there were other moments where he was very supportive. Um, so I think, yeah, when you're working with young people, you do have to challenge them, but they need to know that it's coming from a good place. yeah okay and um you know one without the other you you can tip the balance the wrong way ray wilkins was amazing i mean he he actually only had about six months with us because he then went to manage qpr but um i remember we went on a pre-season tour and i mean he was just a brilliant guy loved working with him you know he he was brilliant manners um but we were a young team and in those days you know we'd go and have a few beers and you know so we we would play hard work hard and we were on a pre-season tour and I remember the rest of the lads were going out I was the captain so normally I'd have been you know last in the bar first in the running you know that was the and I but I was rooming with Ray who was obviously England international 80 odd caps coming towards the end of his career and I thought well like you know I remember saying to him I I think the lads are going for a couple of drinks.

24:39He said, yeah. He said, maybe tomorrow, you know, I've got to be ready for training. And I remember thinking, well, I can't be going out and, you know, Ray's first experience. So I remember the rest of the lads were absolutely killing me because I was tucked up in bed while they were enjoying themselves. So, no, he was a brilliant guy. And, again, he had, what I learned from Ray, he was 35. He came into a young dressing room. he could have been aloof he could have been but he was brilliant with the younger players he was humble he mucked in he joined in with all the stupid jokes but he also managed to hold his standard tie he came in in a suit and tie every day there you go, that'll show him he'd done that in Italy he was used to doing that in Italy so he kept this beautiful balance of fitting in while keeping his own level and yeah he was so sad that he passed but he's a brilliant man yeah.

25:42I see echoes there of Steve Koppel as well who was managing Palace when you kind of moved up to the first team another player that generation that era and it's probably the fault of newspapers of course you were a famous Croydon advertiser columnist at this stage in your life but it was probably the fault of newspapers that we only really learned about the footballers who were a bit crazy or a bit mad or you know i mean most obviously going back to george best and then gaza and then you know the ones that might make the front pages rather than the back pages but i've always had a fascination with the with i mean steve copple had a degree didn't he was and you mentioned ray wilkins having a very gentlemanly approach to the game i always think graham lesseau is underrated in that context as well a great you know thinker cerebral gentleman you barely get noticed in the context of football reporting sports reporting yeah well we like to we like to label people don't we yeah I mean Steve was ahead of his time he really should have had a bigger role within English football over the last 10-15 years I think he's got so much knowledge he's bright and I think him and Steve Highway were two university graduates that were playing at that time but that was it they were kind of almost a pub quiz question well it was it was you know they're the university graduates there they are over the you know university graduates left you know yeah other erbots to the right you know but and and nothing ever went any deeper i suppose that's one of the nice things today that we're able to do things like this where you have more time to talk and yes i think you get a better understanding you of one of the benefits of social media perhaps is that you see people's personalities more behind the scenes and um you know that that isn't always easy when you're in a public facing job yeah i hadn't thought of that it is a rare plus because it's such a sewer at the moment but the reason why people fell in love with it in the first place was that you could i think it's called parasocial relationships was word of the year okay and it is when you feel that you know people in the public eye even though you don't which you can cast as a negative but you've you've just identified why it can be a positive as well and it's the zeitgeist that you kind of arrived in with with with the dear england letter and with that whole episode when you're reaching people that you wouldn't really have been able to reach when my godfather my late godfather for example was the news of the world's footy correspondent in the northwest and i'd answer the phone in his house it'd be kenny dalgleith on the end of the line that was the only way they could get you could get anything into the public space was through a through a journalist it's not true anymore no and i think um with the national team our comms department did a brilliant job of that around the russia world cup where uh there was a disconnect between the team and the fans and clearly most of that was down to results but um it was the advent of social media and we embedded a photographer with the team and so instead of just seeing the stiff pictures that you get training the day before a game where everyone used to be on their best behavior because the press were in so now you had these relaxed shots from behind the scenes where you saw the lads on the inflatable unicorns and things like that and it connected with the younger generation but you also got more of a sense of the camaraderie that was going on behind the scenes, which was my experience playing with England, but wasn't always the public perception.

29:12And I think we benefited from that advent of social media, but also our, you know, whenever people talk about a team and managing a team, they immediately think of the players. We had some brilliant people behind the scenes in all these departments coming up with those sorts of ideas. And, you know, they're things that I get credit for as the manager, but they're other people's ideas that I was just prepared to go with really. This is true in many fields isn't it? People that you might describe them as the right hand men, the Peter Taylors if you like to go back to Brian Clough. But what's the difference between people who've got equal love, equal passion, equal knowledge of the game and some people are quite happy being one step down from the peak of the pyramid and some people want to be in charge, some people want to be the leader.

30:01Yeah, I think different personalities, different skills. You know, very often the leader has to have a knowledge of everything, but isn't necessarily an expert in lots of those areas. And I think if I think about, you know, head of medical department, my assistant, Steve Holland, he'd be so detailed in the preparation of training plans, of tactical plans. now I had to understand all of that and I you know on the football side obviously I was more heavily involved but you know medically I've got an understanding because I've played for 30 years I've worked with players for a long time but I'm not a medical expert so I've got to be able to take in information process information make good decisions from the information that's given and I think very often people in the roles where they're having to be the experts in that one area, they're perhaps a little bit happier to be out of the frontline spotlight as well.

31:08Because they can indulge all of the passion and enthusiasm without necessarily having to indulge the abuse and the scrutiny. Well, yeah, and also once you're in a management role in any industry, the thing that you love doing, I always talk about chefs people are probably fed up talking about chefs but you know chefs start because they love creating food they love creating dishes once you run a restaurant you've got far less time to do that because you've got to employ people manage people deal with budgets you've got to make the thing work as a commercial enterprise so actually the time doing what you really loved at the start is far less and I think that's in the book is realising when you make these steps up in any business, it can take you away from the bit you love and all of a sudden you need a different skill set because your job then is to manage other people and get the best out of other people, not just get the best out of yourself

32:13We're on the bit now where people know the story to varying degrees depending on how much they follow football and how big fans they are of Palace then Villa then Middlesbrough but you you are now established so 21 at club level you stay with Palace when they go down and Alan Smith comes back makes you captain I think after about 100 appearances that settled on you quite easily I sense that was it kind of felt like quite a natural progression or were you slightly awed by Well, again, I was 23, 24, and you've got a dressing room with 34, 35-year-olds, so you know that some of those guys will be thinking that they should be captain, and they'll be waiting to see how you're going to deal with them.

33:03So I was very conscious of that dynamic and making sure that, firstly, I proved myself on the pitch. I think in football, a captain, first thing is play well. But the second thing would be recognise, have the emotional intelligence to realise that if you're going to go steaming in and start confronting those older, more experienced players, then that's a dangerous route to go. So you need to earn their trust and earn their respect. So that's a fascinating dynamic, isn't it, from captain to manager? because in a way as a young captain um you're the respect is is moving upwards you're you're seeking the respect of people who sit a bit above you in the food chain yep and then when you become manager it's a slightly different dynamic you need the respect of people who are technically below you i mean if you're a club manager you might only be earning a fraction of what some of the players are earning these days yeah but you're still in the in the hierarchy they're below you in the food chain so they're two different challenges but speaking to the same dynamic really yeah they are and and i found that shift that took me a little while to get used to because i literally went overnight player at middlesbrough straight into management not a route i would recommend no what could you do in between just just be an assistant or do a bit of coaching yeah be an assistant maybe work with some of the youth teams because you're learning a new trade really you're learning to teach you're learning to mentor you're learning to uh to manage situations um i'd never managed financial budgets i've never managed this is the chef again isn't it yeah yeah very much so it's a perfect analogy chairing meetings you know i've never been in a meeting other than a players meeting so um so yeah that that that is a different shift and of course you don't necessarily change as a person but the way you're viewed changes because all of a sudden at Middlesbrough the players I played with I now the decisions I make affect their careers and affect their livelihood so you know inevitably that that dynamic does change what did you think when um Steve Gibson was it came in and said yeah do you fancy taking over from Steve McLaren yeah as manager it was a huge jump um but I knew I was coming towards the end of my 35 yeah I still had another year left on my playing contract but I couldn't be at the level I I had been at you know I knew all the things that aging sports people realize you know the body's taking longer to recover you can't get around the I mean I was never quick but I was even slower then um so I would I started to prepare for coaching um but I was thinking that would be as an assistant or working in the academy um so yeah you know in hindsight i think i've said it's the best and the worst decision i made why the best because sometimes you've got to throw yourself into something you know you can go on all the coaching courses you can prepare and prepare and prepare but actually the moment when you're thrown in you're going to learn more than any other time anyway yeah um but it was the worst because I wasn't ready for that leap you know the jump from not having coached even a junior team to being in the Premier League for three years was enormous albeit as we'll get to shortly you did hit the ground running initially um but we can't gloss over the penalty um but I don't want to dwell on it unduly because you've talked about it not because I'm worried about you being uncomfortable but simply because you've said everything that there is to say about it a hundred times and understandably so because these are these are the seminal moments in in those moments when football transcends football and becomes a sort of national interest a national issue um it you've never fought shy of how profound a moment it was have you you've never tried to sort of pretend that it was anything other than cataclysmic for you personally yeah yeah i mean i think it was so public and so apparent that um impossible to back away from um shouldn't be should it i mean it's ridiculous really once you start picking football apart the whole thing's ridiculous but it was uh yeah i suppose it taught me so much and some of those lessons were still were still coming out 15, 20 years later, for example, preparing our team for penalty shootouts and the aftermath of penalty shootouts.

37:46So, you know, on so many levels, I failed to execute a skill under pressure. So how could I have prepared better for that? The resilience, again, the word that we keep using, but realizing that probably professionally that's as difficult a moment as I was going to face. so once you've been through that anything else can't really hurt you in it you know i think comes a power it does um and it's quite liberating really so yeah i'm not i'm definitely at this point you know for the six months to eight to a year found it really difficult to deal with really difficult to move past the mistake the public perceptions of of what i would be you know that was my label if you like that that at that point was the last slide in the presentation if you were showing your life and you know now now there are other things you know that people will talk about so I hope for you know young people watching probably particularly around that Russia World Cup where we we won a penalty shootout and there was that little bit of a redemption story um you know i hope that shows people you know these things will happen you things are going to go wrong in life you will have failures but there is a way through and um you know it's tough you have those days where you don't want to get out from under the duvet but um there's always a way through those things i i i don't know if you can answer this question i don't know whether you've thought about it before but what For someone not in the game, what was it most like?

39:32You met your wife, Alison, very young, didn't you? I don't know if you've ever been dumped from a great height. That feeling of waking up in the morning and just think, oh, is there anything you can compare it to? Or was it unique? Well, look, I guess after three years as manager of Middlesbrough, I was sacked. And anybody that's lost their job, yeah you know you've got you've got the you've got the personal feel of that you've got the people around you what how that impacts them but then you've got that slight feeling of more public humiliation because i know people at your kids school know know that you've lost the job or and um yeah it's a personal thing that you've got to try and deal with in the the feeling in your stomach and all those um emotional feelings that that you have you've got to come and try and come through that well you know when i the two three days after missing the penalty we we went back we were living in birmingham at the time because i was at villa the media were right on the edge of the driveway basically and you know i was the driveway was only 10 yards long i'm fortunate that my driveway is a bit longer now but it wasn't far between the driveway and the front so uh but you know literally i don't know how i'm ever going to get through this you know every news channel they're re-running it and so you know there are moments where you think there is no way forward but there is you know and you need help you need good support around you you need good friends, good family.

41:17But there's always a way through these things step by step, I think. You know, it's funny, in the background, there's always a couple of questions in my mind when I'm talking to people like you. And one of them might have been when we first sat down, why did you want to write a book on leadership? But with, you know, about 20 minutes of this to go, you had to, didn't you? Well, I think that, you know, I've been in so many situations throughout my life where I think there are things if I was younger you know when I read other books I learned a lot from reading other books of course there's all your lived experiences but if you only learn from your lived experiences it's going to take you a long time to to learn everything you might need to know and you can't have all of them no no and you want you want to be as well prepared as you can be um and the other part is I think the role I had is such a high profile leadership role that it puts you into situations that are quite extreme.

42:17And I wanted to explain a little bit about the madness of that role I had. So it's been really rewarding that, you know, people have sent messages saying, yeah, you know, I mean, like any book, people pick up different parts of it. You know, this bit really resonated, this bit I hadn't thought about. That was why I wrote it. You know, it was a bit cathartic going through it as well. But, you know, I'm passionate about leadership and I think we need, perhaps more than ever, strong leaders in our country, in the world generally. Because, you know, we've got to have more optimism and if we can help develop good young leaders, then the future of our country will be in a better place.

43:04Simple as that. One of the things that struck me most was something I hadn't really realized before, because it's not the section of the bookshop I go to first. And I don't, I mean, it will obviously get filed alongside other books that are kind of about leadership or about business or, you know, the motivational speaking kind of world, but in print. and one of the things that struck me most was that it's actually important to everybody whether you're going to be a leader or whether you're going to be led having a better understanding of this stuff is incredibly valuable it's not just for people who want to be ceos or england managers it's for everybody to understand the dynamic of teams and and and human progress really well i think um whenever i've traveled to schools businesses organizations you know they're there are some common themes that always come out normally you've got to work with a team of people it's very you know there'd be the odd industry that doesn't but it's very rare you're not in some sort of a team there's a need to get the best out of people sometimes that's having challenging conversations that most people would rather avoid but by avoiding them we don't get the best out of people and you make things worse well that can also be the case um very often we're dealing with difficult personalities but they can actually be the most productive people in your business as well so how do you get those creative talents to buy into that team ethos um and and so yeah although it's in football i hope that the lived experiences people will translate into their own world i know i find myself doing it's a bit sad but i read books on a different topic and i kind of align it to what's going on in my life or my world or what my kids are doing or i don't think that's sad at all i think that's why people write these books yeah it's why you wrote yours and it will be i mean it will work for people it will be helpful and useful to people who don't know one end of a football from another yeah well because there's a lot these are human yeah stories yeah i i think that's why i didn't want to go too deep into the football technical part because people like your wife yeah and my wife not particularly interested in the football element of it um but i think they can relate to the stories in the context of your story where oddly you did it the wrong way around didn't you after the after the middles were sacking i mean very unfairly after after beating derby i think he gave you the boot didn't he just got to yeah but we'd been but he could have done it months before so yeah i mean the reason i said you hit the ground running you go from manager of the month to and i think an 11 run losing streak yeah and so these are baptisms by fire but then you do at the international level the stuff that perhaps you i mean you can't say should have done but might more obviously have done yeah in the background and you know working with the with all of the teams as head of elite development and um trevor brooking somebody else who's got that kind of slightly more cerebral approach i think to the game and now you're doing your leadership apprenticeship despite having had quite a high profile leadership job already yeah I think you're absolutely right if what I learned about the development of young players in that period taught me so much and would have been a great grounding and the downside of that of not doing that first is that what happened to me at Middlesbrough you know some some people look at my record as a manager and still say well you know failed at Middlesbrough what what chance would he have anywhere else but that's like criticizing me as a 16 year old player compared to a 28 year old international player yeah what I knew then and the experiences I'd had so different um and young people will be promoted into roles that they're going to struggle with at the start so again in other walks of life they shouldn't lose confidence there is a there is a process of learning here you know you've got to go through this learning to get to where you need to get to and it isn't overnight success it isn't immediate everybody goes through these challenges so um yeah I I did end up but I guess because I was able to reflect on well what what did I get wrong at Middlesbrough you know what didn't I know that I needed to know it meant that when I had the experiences after that I was able to learn with some evidence of the realities of the job rather than it just being theory and and again I think we you could write a book about theory but here I have gone into the areas I got wrong the realities of things I got wrong the practice yeah and I think you've got to go through those practical experiences to be able to improve and learn.

48:05Did you have any inkling when you were head of elite development and then there's a little hiatus, isn't there, 2012, 2013, you come back managing the under-21s? Did you ever allow yourself to think that you might possibly be in pole position when these youngsters started coming through to the adult team? Because it's an odd thing to do in the context. I know that the tournaments you play as the under-21s are an end in themselves to the players to to the manager but to the country the we watch an under 21s game and we're automatically thinking about the senior final for for two years down the line or six years down the line do you do that as a coach were you ever thinking about what the building blocks you're assembling now might become later and will i still be the architect then or could i be the architect then never thought at that point about being manager with a senior team at all okay um because it would be odd given the lack of club experience yeah yeah yeah exactly and you know what i wanted to do was we've i mean one thing we've been world class that over the years are root and branch reviews of what's going wrong god save us from the great thing is in the last 10 years we haven't had to have one of those but but so if we've done nothing else at least we've done that but um no I literally went in because there were recommendations to improve youth football from grassroots football which is about the enjoyment of kids frankly through to international junior football and we were building St George's Park at the time the new national football center so there were some great projects that I was invested in um and then with the under 21s it was a chance to coach some of the best players and try to help their pathway through to the senior team so you know I was realistic I I didn't have the track record to be considered for the senior team and I'd also lived through watching people like Graham Taylor Bobby Robson you know what that role had entailed for them their families so no it wasn't something i had any great enthusiasm for at all of course not i mean i've often thought that and i used to have this conversation with my godfather that if you were the um you know if you were german or brazilian or argentinian then the british newspapers would almost be allies of you when it comes to undermining the certainly the managers and the players but particularly the managers a hideous treatment that younger people listening to this now would struggle to think was even true the turnip stuff with taylor the really vicious personal abuse that went far beyond anything that was happening on the pitch i can see why you wouldn't fancy that but the world was changing a little bit by now and um you have a nightmare in 2015 with the under 21s um but you've already spotted people like harry kane and and john stones you you respond to that in the way that you've just been explaining you learn from it um you come back the following year in too long the senior team is is having a bit of a nightmare at euro 2016 and then you get the call sam Allardyce suffers from a little local difficulty and you get the nod only for four games initially but now you are allowing yourself to think that if the four games go well everything changes.

51:21Yeah but by that point I'd been asked to apply for the job the previous summer. Again I didn't think there'd be enthusiasm for an internal appointment so and when you're stepping into a role like that you need some sort of support or at least not a lobby that's vehemently against you but when the caretaker role came up there was nobody else no in a good position to take the team partly because of what we were just talking about I mean if you wouldn't want it you wouldn't want to move across from a big club job well no but also there were three days before a world cup qualifier so it was going to be impossible to go and get a manager from a club or and I had taken a lot of the team when they were younger and I knew the rhythm of an international calendar.

52:10So, yeah, it was, it was, you're in the role by default. We had a good run in those four games and then by then I knew, well, actually, I think the players are buying into the way we're working. I think there's a little bit of buy-in from the public, not huge, but then probably thinking, well, we've had a go with foreign managers, we've had a go with, we might as well give this bloke a chance. he owes us well that's right yeah he's in deficits and let's see how he gets on so yeah that was the moment where I thought no actually I feel as though I can step in and do this and yeah but prior to that point that had never been I'd had an ambition to play for England but I'd never had an ambition to manage England until that point and the planets align, I mean there's a bit of serendipity here but goodness me you needed to have your ducks in a row to take advantage of that role of the of the roulette wheel that suddenly came up for you and and this is now that I'm very much the part of the story that that everybody will be familiar with the trajectory that you're on now leads to um albeit that you know we never had the moment of of lifting the trophy in many ways when you did resign and say after the second euro final it has it's a lovely line this it has been the honor of my life we've made england fun again thank you for that i mean it was i could get quite emotional about it now i really can but it was i mean you changed the world well when you're when you're in sport you're always thinking about the trophy you might have won so you always want that bit more um but um i think we've we came so far and yeah we we did have a big impact and the team now i guess any leader you're looking at what was the situation when you arrived and what did you leave behind and um whatever people think i think they would accept that we're in a stronger position now um and a lot of the barriers for the team towards winning have been broken through you You know, we hadn't won a knockout game in 10 years.

54:21We hadn't won a penalty shootout in seven attempts. We hadn't been to a final for 50 years. So there's now far more belief. There's more belief in the team. Supporters aren't hiding behind the sofa when things go to penalties. And, you know, that's, you know, in my more sober moments, they're the things I do reflect on. I think, yeah, you know, we made a positive difference there. Oh, for sure. For sure. two more questions the first is something you mentioned to me before the tape started rolling you haven't been to see James Grahams play Dear England you didn't see Ralph Fiennes play Gary Southgate why not well James wrote to us when he was first had the play as a concept and I think that was I think that was after the first Euros final and and felt that our story was still going on it it wasn't finished um so then the idea of sitting watching a play about you of course and also you know some of the things that happened that there there is drama elements to that that of course when you when you're sitting knowing everything that happened and you know all the individual characters that that that would have felt a little bit uncomfortable so um but i mean he rewrote the ending to accommodate what happened yeah well i haven't seen any of the endings but i mean by the way my i have subsequently met james for lunch i think he's a brilliantly talented writer and i've seen his other play ironically punch which is incredible um um focus so yeah it just felt an awkward thing to do really you're very busy man any unscratched itches i mean because you mentioned with age things change could you conceive of going back into any level of the game at all at any point in the future yes or no answer go i can't do yes and no's because like you never ruled it out but i've had you know one of the biggest jobs in world football yeah and the fact the bigger fact for me is it had a purpose you know my I'm so passionate about my country so you know one of the things I am hoping to do is continue to help young people in our country that that matters to me um and I think it's an area because of the roles I've had where I might be able to have some impact so that feels at this moment in my life more important to me than playing the same film out again in a in a football club it's been an absolute privilege to sit down with you it really has dear England Lessons in Leadership by Gary Southgate is out now.

57:09And I hope in the course of this hour, we've established why this isn't just a book that you could write. It's a book that you kind of had to write. Gary, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you.

57:27This has been a Global Player original production.