Episode 1 - Gareth Southgate: Lessons in Life, Leadership & Football

0:00Amol Rajan: Sir Gareth Southgate. I'm very nervous about this. We'll drop the sir from now on. It's amazing that you decided to step away from England. Why did you walk away? By the end, I didn't even enjoy the winds for any longer than a couple of minutes. I had become divisive, which I didn't think was helping the team. As I'm walking away, I'm thinking, now what if I miss this? I've always been a leader. If somebody says to you, will you step up? You inherently think, yeah, no, I need to step up here. You get under the bed covers and you think, goodness me, I can't believe what's happened today. How do I face tomorrow?

0:32So there's a lesson there that beware the sort of conscientious volunteer. Because that's what I was. I love the sport. I don't love the industry. The Manchester City case or what happened with FIFA in the summer. None of that is good for football. There are no winners. Power changes people.

0:52Amol Rajan: Would you go back into the Premier League and manage a club? What is it like to experience that degree of relentless scrutiny? Yeah, I mean, it's not great for your sense of happiness. Not making firmer decisions earlier, I think, had a knock-on effect. There's, I guess, a national bit of work for us as a nation of what is our identity. The reality is that the result is just a small part of it. when England play, there's so much more at stake. No matter what happens, I just hope that their parents, teachers and club managers will turn to them and say, look, that's the way to represent your country.

1:34That's what England is about. That is what's possible.

1:39Amol Rajan: When in 1983, Southampton Football Club's youth team dropped a promising defender, worrying that he wasn't quite tough enough to really cut it with the big boys, they cannot have known that they had lit a fire that would shine on English football for the next 40 years. That young defender would go on to be one of England's most successful managers, redefining both modern England and leadership while taking his country to the edge of glory. In this, the very first episode of the Amol Rajan Connection, I want to explore the enigma of that very English everyman, Gareth Southgate, an introvert who has spent decades in the public eye, and a proud patriot who, since stepping away from football, has turned his attention to the crisis of meaning facing a generation of boys and young men.

2:30Amol Rajan: Who is Gareth Southgate? What did he learn from the most famous penalty miss in English history? And how can he help us to win the future? So this is the first episode of the Amol Rajan Connection, and usually we're going to get straight into the conversation but I just want to spend a very brief moment explaining what we're trying to do here. So this is a twice-weekly long-form interview out on Thursdays and Mondays with simply the smartest and most interesting people on the planet. And our aim is to build the most useful platform for ideas anywhere in the world to slow our world down and explain the deep forces and trends shaping this crazy era.

3:13Amol Rajan: I have just one request, which is to make sure you don't miss out on the weekly episodes please subscribe for free because that way we can stay in touch. And having you here means the world to me. And we simply wouldn't be able to embark on this adventure without the big, bold support of our four launch partners. I am proud to work with them and I want to thank them. So in alphabetical order, first up, Amazon. They are one of the world's great companies and I've used their products from Prime Video to Home Delivery for years. I've also met their global CEO, Andy Jassy, and their UK boss, John Bountfree.

3:47Amol Rajan: and they are doing vital, urgent work on an issue that is a huge passion of mine and indeed John's, and that is our NEATS emergency. Young people are really struggling, and you are going to hear more about that very soon. Next, Google Cloud. So I have used well over a dozen of Google's apps, products, and services for over 20 years. And with the AI revolution and launching a business, Google Cloud, which is a suite of great tools, has become a critical part of my life. I've spent time with Sundar Pichai and Kate Alessi, the global and UK CEOs, and they want to use technology for good. If you are building a business, give Google Cloud a try.

4:28Amol Rajan: As a teenager, I walked into my local NatWest branch in South London with my dad. I have banked with them for 25 years and I now have a business account with them too. And NatWest does more than look after your money. From starting out to growing a business or planning for the future, they have practical support to turn intent into action, whether it's wealth management or business advice. And having met recently with Paul Thwaite, the impressive CEO, I will be making full use of those services soon. And last but very much not least, Waitrose. The future of food is going to be a big theme on this show.

5:03Amol Rajan: Food is so fundamental to many of the big challenges of our age. And when I spoke to Tom Denyard, the managing director, he mentioned how well-positioned Waitrose is to champion a better food system as the home of food lovers. Well, you can say that about me as well. I happen to think, for what it's worth, that the partnership on Mutual Model deserves close attention too. So, Gareth Southgate, I'm very nervous about this. Do you know why I'm nervous? I've never done this before. I think you'll be very comfortable within a few seconds and we'll drop the sir from now on drop the sir, ok we won't do it but if this goes really bad and I get too nervous you'll have to interview me thank you so much for doing this I happen to know you are a man in huge demand particularly busy even though you've stepped away from football and so the fact that you're the first guest on the Amal Rajan Connection it means the world to me, it really does and I'm so so grateful it's an honour to do it So to be the first, I'm very privileged.

6:01Amol Rajan: Thank you. And I promise not to talk about Aston Villa in the 1990s, that we could do that. There's so much I want to talk to you about. Leadership, young men, modern masculinity, all of that. But I just want to start with a particular thought, which is, so we do a lot of research in preparation for this show, and I heard your Desert Island Discs. And do you know, there was this amazing moment in the Desert Island Discs where you said, I'm a bit of an introvert. I like my own space. and I thought, here's an introvert who spent four decades in the public eye, who's had the most public jobs of all, faced more scrutiny than almost anyone else in Britain right now and who, despite being a private family man, has had all these very, very, very public jobs.

6:45Amol Rajan: How did an introvert end up living such a public life? Well, it's a great point. I mean, I don't think too deeply about it But I suppose, yeah, I think you have natural tendencies. So my natural tendency is I get energy. If I'm tired and I need energy, I probably like my own space and I like time. We used to personality profile all the staff and players. So what you find is that you might have, you know, I'm an introvert. But of course, there are times where you have to be an extrovert and you have to step out of what's your norm. And what happens is that just costs you a bit more energy. So everybody dials up.

7:30You're not one thing or another. You've got certain traits that are more common and more natural for you and more comfortable for you.

7:36Amol Rajan: So it's the big five personality tests, so like open, closed, extrovert, introvert, agreeable, disagreeable, neurotic or not, all that stuff. Okay, well, I mean, there's hundreds of versions of things and I've sat and filled in a dozen of them at least over the years. How did you come out? What's your personality according to those choices? I'm more for people. So, you know, on some of the profiles we did, fiery reds would be, you know, obvious leadership tendencies, like to be out the front, quite forthright, command style of leading, if you like. You get details people who, you know, like to know exactly what's going on there, very process driven.

8:19you get I mean this is very broad but people that like more fun they like a lighter side of things and then I'm I'm sort of empathetic caring but so I sit in that bottom area but of course when you're leading you've got to be able to dial up the other things so you have to have strategy in detail you have to at times lead from the front command people more be demanding of people um But yeah, my natural space is really I am generally an introvert.

8:50Amol Rajan: So is that caring, that empathetic tendency, why when you decided to step away from football, having had this very, very public life in football for decades, having the biggest job in English football, having perhaps the biggest moment of English football in the 1990s, I just want to say why it is that Sir Gareth Southgate chose to give a lecture and make one of his central focuses what's happening with boys and young men why did you do that move i mean because for a lot of people they knew you as a footballer and as a great person in football now and we're going to get into this later on but you are really someone who's spending a huge amount of your time traveling speaking to people working on quite detailed policy around this quite specific issue about modern men why that issue timing in a so I was offered the opportunity to deliver the Dimbleby lecture and immediately thought, well, that's a great opportunity to do something that I knew.

9:48I understood the history of it and the gravitas of it, but you better have something important to say. And at the same time, several reports were starting to come out. There was a report entitled The Lost Boys, the CSJ did. as a center of social justice yeah yeah and um it the report really resonated me i then relayed that to the boys i'd coached for years and that sort of age group of teenage men really and also suddenly things that you're aware of it's a little bit like everybody's consciousness of social media and its impact but we've kind of blindly gone along with not policing it if you and allowing our kids so much access to it, all of a sudden staring us in the face is this issue of young men, what's happening in education.

10:42Yeah, yeah. The fact that so many are being excluded, the fact that a lot of the previously male-dominated jobs, quite manual jobs have disappeared. At the extreme finish point, young men ending up in prison or taking their own lives and so many steps along the way. So it felt an important issue to raise. I was also very mindful that life's not been brilliant for women forever. So where do you balance that? Because I'm married, I've got a daughter, I care about young women and what's happening to them. But interestingly, the more I spoke to people, mums, grands, sisters were saying, no, no, no, there's a problem with young men and you're right to highlight it.

11:33Amol Rajan: When you watch this documentary that you made, and we'll get into it, that you made, still on the iPlayer actually, about changing the game for young men, you are really at pains not to stigmatise young women and single mums in particular. That's a theme that we will come back to. I have a kind of secret, based on the research, the extensive research we've done for this, I have a bit of a secret theory about Gareth Southgate, which is I think, which obviously I'm trying to relate to my own story because why wouldn't you? See, I got dropped from the Surrey under-17 squad when I was 17 years old because I wasn't good enough.

12:02Amol Rajan: I mean, I kind of pretend it was because I had an injury, and I did a little bit, but I got dropped, and I wanted to bowl leg spin for England. I wasn't good enough, but it was kind of the making of me because I had this letter at home from this guy. His name was Rick, the coach, and he wrote this letter. I'm so sorry, dear Mr. Rajan to my parents, but your son's going to have to be let go. And I think that that fired me up, and I've sort of wanted to prove him wrong for the last 25 years. And I came across a quite amazing story about what happened to you at Southampton when you were 13. And I think that there's a little part of Gareth Southgate that spent a long time trying to prove people wrong.

12:39Amol Rajan: Do you mind just telling us what happened at Southampton? Because you've still got the letter. Well, I got a letter and I still have it. I think I produced it that night at the Dimbleby lecture. So similar situation, impersonal letter.

12:57written to me, but a typed letter with my name written at the top. So it was a circular, really, to everybody that was being released. It was personalised in the ink. Yeah. Actually said, Dear Gareth Southgate, we will not be offering your son. So, you know, it wasn't even... They got it wrong.

13:14Amol Rajan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ridiculous. Yeah, what did that... I mean, I'm not unique in footballers who are released at an early age and then come back to try and find a different path. There were lots of early developers, late developers. But yeah, something within me definitely wanted to firstly put that in the drawer and keep it and remind myself of it. But yeah, I don't know why there's that feeling of wanting to prove people wrong, but I felt that 40 or so years in football from that point on, you're always having to prove yourself. You know, you've never, you're an England international, but you've got to play well to stay in the team.

13:57You're a manager of your country, but everybody's questioning what you're doing. So you've never cracked it. You've never actually, there's never a point where you think, right, I've arrived. I am there. I'm where I want to be. There's always something to strive for.

14:11Amol Rajan: I think, how can I put this, Sir Gareth? I think you've arrived. having played for England having managed England having had possibly by some definitions the most successful career of any manager I mean surely now not that you go around looking in the mirror thinking I proved that guy at Stampton wrong but you have proved them wrong haven't you? Well if you'd said to me at 13 having been rejected you'll play 50 times for your country you know at that stage in my life that's all I wanted to do was be a footballer and play for England And that was my dream. So without a doubt, now I would sit there and say, happy.

14:50But once you've done that, then there are other things you want to do. And at 56 as I am now, there's still things I want to do. There's life experiences I want to have. And anything that I'm part of, I want to succeed. And I want to do it well. And I want to make sure that I represent myself or my family or my company well. Your country.

15:10Amol Rajan: Yeah, absolutely. There's this other wonderful story that Alan Smith, who's a big figure in your life, Alan Smith made you captain at Crystal Palace at the age of 23. How did you handle being the leader of a load of big, strong, very physically able players who are often significantly older and more experienced than you and might have said, why should we take orders from this 23-year-old? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think I've got the emotional intelligence to understand that dynamic was going to be there. And I knew that I kind of had to earn my spurs. And although I'd captained all the junior teams, everybody's the same age.

15:53So really anybody that is prepared to step forward and take some responsibility immediately becomes a leader. Because most people are quite happy to take a step back and be led.

16:03Amol Rajan: Is that right? Is that your experience? I think so. I don't think it takes a lot, but very often you'll be in a room and if we were in a room of strangers and somebody said, well, somebody just get this group in, most people will go, oh, God, I hope it's not me, just somebody else go and do it. Because people don't want to put themselves in that position where I guess others might start to criticise them or if things go wrong, you're responsible. So I immediately thought, well, that's a great honour, but I know the three 30-odd-year-olds in the team are going to think, jumped up little star, why is he captain, why not us?

16:40So I tried to prove myself every day on the training pitch. I tried to make sure that socially I'm pretty good at connecting people so I made sure that if we were having social events I was there and in the middle of all of that.

16:55Amol Rajan: Because you've got to earn your authority, don't you? I mean, a 29-year-old who's got 100 caps and has scored 20 goals a season, that's their authority. How did you earn? It's interesting, you know, since I started launching a company on a place like LinkedIn where you're very active, there's lots of founders who get in touch with me, young people, they might be 23, thinking, you know, I'm about to ask for money from an investor or I'm about to lay out a vision for where my company's going to go. And they're thinking, I'm 23, do I have the authority? Where did your authority come from as a 23-year-old at Palace?

17:26Well, I think one of the first things you have to do as a captain is play well. so the season that I took charge we were in what's now the championship I think I scored nine goals we won the league you scored nine goals well I was in midfield then it was before I'd been put out to grass at the back but I had somebody speak at an event last night and they were talking about moments to lead from behind lead from within the group lead from the front and I thought that was a very good observation at that point I would have felt the need to be within the group making sure that I don't put myself outside the group and you know if if there's a point at which I need to step forward and lead I'm prepared to do that but I've got to do the work within the group and fight the manager's cause a little bit within the group and fight the group's cause with the manager but fundamentally perform well and make sure I'm doing my bit for the team so that people are saying okay there's no way they can turn around if you're criticizing them or asking them to deliver more you know if they turn around and say well you're you've been hopeless for the last three weeks that does undermine your argument a little bit so so you need it's a challenge i mean a lot of the cricket well you'll have seen in cricket form can go when you're the captain and that

18:45Amol Rajan: tends to puts you in a vulnerable position and it's often the case of the captain captain c is given to the person who's scoring the most runs and that's because they're the first name on the team sheet and then suddenly they get the captaincy they wear it very heavily and they score no runs and then they're bad batsmen and a bad captain which is difficult but you must have also needed the authority of Alan Smith above you to say Gareth's my guy I've chosen him and his almost mandate gave you the authority to be an effective captain Yes and he was supportive and he helped me develop within that role but also that comes with the rest of the dressing room center he's the exactly teacher's pet or whatever else so it's a double-edged sword you're always like i've got a very strong awareness of how those group dynamics play out um in any group that you're a part of and um yeah i i needed i knew what was required but but i knew i needed different approaches with different members of the team and to have an awareness that the guys that were my age that were very close peers they were going to follow me I'd play I'd know them for five or six years but the older guys I had to be respectful and make sure that I earned their trust and but then still at the right times push them as well it must have worked out pretty well because not long after that you got an England cap for those of us who dreamt of sporting glory but didn't quite achieve it who knows may yet happen looking at the England cricket team I could get called up any time now.

20:14Amol Rajan: What did it feel like? First of all, who called you? Did Terry Venables call you? How did you find out back then that you were going to get an England call up? That's a great point. In those days, you got a letter through the post. No. So the squad must have been picked on a Tuesday and the letter kind of arrived on a Thursday. Really? And then it went on to what would have been teletext in those days. C-fax. Yeah. C-fax, kids. You wouldn't have experienced that, would you? I'm all about C-fax, thank you very much. The 1990s, to be big for me. Kids, if you're watching this, CFAX was this thing, doesn't exist anymore.

20:46Amol Rajan: You had a button on your remote on the television and Chris, he's from Canada, he's just like, what is this guy talking about? It was a kind of information service with like 600 pages. The county cricket scores are always page 341 and you press the number and it comes up with this kind of, it looks like kind of old space invaders writing and you sort of, it's like a kind of internet before the internet, something like that. Yeah, I guess sort of red button of its time. Yes. and you could watch the live football scores, but there were three pages for the Premier League. You never got this. So it was page one, and it was on for about 45 seconds, wasn't it?

21:22So your team... If you missed it. Yeah, so I'd be out shopping with my parents. You'd go past a television shop, and CFAX would be on. So you're looking at the scores on a Saturday afternoon, and you'd walk away thinking, oh, Palace have won. They're 1-0 at 89th minute. And when it came round four minutes later, They're 2-1 down, they've let two late goals in and it's all done and dusted.

21:45Amol Rajan: So you got a letter, it would have been hopefully directly addressed to you as opposed to a generic one with Dear Gareth written at the top and a letter from the England manager? It was a schedule basically. I mean, FA crest in beautiful blue colouring which is vivid in my mind. The names that are in the squad and your itinerary for the week basically which days, I mean you only had three day camps in those days so um and then the club would have had a notification and then it would have been publicized in the in the media so yeah no contact with terry until i arrived at burnham beaches on the sunday night when we were reported and he sort of welcomed you in and then you're then you're off and running it must have felt pretty good to tell your parents oh amazing i mean that's almost the best bit i imagine well i'm dad i'm gonna play for england i think what's vivid in my mind is I mean Burnham Beaches had a bit of mystique about it that was where the England team stayed and they always used to train at Bisham Abbey so this kind of hotel which wasn't actually particularly special but it had this sort of mythical air because you'd heard about it and when you got to your room all your training kit was in your room now I didn't play for England at any junior level so it's the first time I've got England kit in my room and I just remember putting it on as soon as I got in the room.

23:08What does that feel like? What does it actually feel like? Well, just incredible pride and emotion because you then start to think of everybody that's helped you on that journey, all the coaches, your family, the people that have influenced your career to that. I was 25 at that point, so I was late getting into that. I've been late getting into everything, really.

23:30Amol Rajan: It seems that you get there in the end. It's also very difficult for those wonderful young, members of our audience who don't know CFAX, it's probably quite hard for them to understand just what an extraordinary national atmosphere came with Euro 96. The sense of an entire nation. There's a rather famous song called Three Lions, but there was a sort of cuteness in the 30 years since 1966. You had these megastars, apart from Gareth Southgate, you had the Gascoines, the Shearers, and in Terry Venables, you had this kind of champion of England. Can you just evoke for us a sense of, because I promise I'm not going to talk to you too much about the penalty because you must have been asked about that so much.

24:08Amol Rajan: But just if you go back in time, the sense of national mood that the mid-90s had, it's a wave that you were riding into Euro 96. Yeah, I guess, you know, the youngsters that have followed us through the Russia World Cup and the Euros at home and the tournaments we were involved in, you know, you get a sense of that build-up of momentum and that build-up of excitement as the games go and these memorable moments that families share together. And, of course, we were hosting, so the whole tournament was played out. I mean, in 2021, we were playing at Wembley, but the rest of the tournament was all over Europe, wasn't it?

24:52So what's coming in 18 months' time is us hosting and the whole country has got games being played. I remember Scotland playing the Dutch at Villa Park, I think, and Italy were playing in Manchester. So there was a real, it's a festival of football. It's brilliant when you host a tournament. And we started really poorly. We were under pressure. We drew the first game with Switzerland. We'd had a bit of a kerfuffle on a pre-tournament trip to Hong Kong where the lads had been out on a night out. So the tabloid media were into us. and beat Scotland we were 1-0 up against Scotland Scotland got a penalty and missed it and then we the famous Gascoigne goal over Colin Hendry just after that so you know that could have gone 1-1 and the whole tournament's heading in a different direction but then the amazing victory against the Dutch which would be one of the best England performances I would think of you know across the years because they were strongly fancied for the tournament as well and again, when you have great moments in your life, you remember all the colours.

26:05I just remember so much orange in the stadium from their fans but then the contrast with our fans with the white and the red and it was an amazing performance. So this whole thing is building and we're into a semi-final and of course we're playing Germany so we'd had the recent history in 1970, 1966. so our greatest football rivals really.

26:30Amol Rajan: A word about Amazon, one of the proud partners of this show. You know, around a million young people in Britain are not in work or education and solving that is a real passion of mine. Amazon do a lot here, but there is one programme that really inspires me. Supported internships, training for young people with learning disabilities and autism where 95 % are unemployed despite most wanting to work. Amazon give them real jobs with a coach beside them the whole way and more than eight in ten go on to find permanent work. Search online for more. Now, I don't feel like you've spent enough of your life talking about that penalty, so I don't want to put you through it.

27:13Amol Rajan: I just want to ask you a couple of questions about it. Why you? And why did... What did Brian Robson say to you? and why did you answer in the way you did when in that key moment someone said, this is going to go to sudden death quite soon, who's up for it? Yeah, yeah. Well, we'd had penalties on the Saturday against Spain and we had five brilliant penalty takers that scored all five and we had the same five for the semi-final. But I think against Spain on the Saturday, the sixth was going to be Gary Neville and Gary was suspended for the semi-final. So we didn't have a designated sixth. I mean, I don't know if that would have worked out very well either, by the way.

28:04I'm sure he's mentioned it once or twice. But so I remember Brian Robson coming up to me at the end of the game and saying, if it goes to number six, will you take one? Now we were in the days where you didn't have many penalty shootouts. FA Cup ties, if it was a draw, you went to a replay and then another replay. So penalty shootouts were only in major tournaments. So I hadn't really been involved in them before. But of course, I'd captained Palace. I was captain at Villa. I've always been a leader. And if somebody says to you, will you step up? You inherently think, yeah, no, I need to step up here.

28:47Otherwise, it's going to be somebody else. and so I've got to, so there's a lesson there that I often say to, if I talk to businesses, beware the sort of conscientious volunteer because that's what I was and actually in those moments it's braver to say actually I'm pretty hopeless at penalties, somebody else should take it but I felt no, I've got to take responsibility and then you start to, As I'm walking away, I'm thinking, now what if I miss this? So already I was into psychological...

29:24Amol Rajan: Civil warfare. Yeah. Had you taken penalties before? I took one at Palace at the Keeper. I think I hit the post or in competitive professional games. I obviously had as a kid, but we weren't practicing in those days. There was this little bit of practice at the end of training, but not serious. If I compare to how we now learned to prepare with the squad, you're talking light years difference. In the moment when Brian Robson says, you're up for it, Fagosa 6, Gareth Southgate, the leader, the captain, the person who led Palace at 23, immediately kicks in, yes, of course I'd do it. He was also my childhood hero, by the way.

30:06So there's another factor that there's no way I was going to say to him, no. Of course. I was a midfield player. I liked Manchester United at the time.

30:17Amol Rajan: You spent a bit of time near Bury growing up. Yeah, he was England captain, so I used to role model my game on him as a kid. So that's another dynamic that was in that conversation, really. So when you think about what happened, did it go wrong just in the moment of contact or did it go wrong because in that journey from the halfway line to the penalty spot, psychologically, you weren't the man you are today at 56. and you... I mean, what went wrong? Yeah, there's a bit of all of that. Essentially, it's a failure to execute a skill under pressure. Is it a failure of a moment or is it a failure of a process?

30:57Amol Rajan: Is it sort of after Brian Robinson says, do you fancy doing this, you think, and then the nerves kick in and you go to pieces? Or is it just as you're running up, your mind's a bit of a jumble? Yeah. I think even if you're a regular penalty taker and you have a process, you're still going to be nervous in a penalty shootout. If you talk to Harry Kane, we got him to talk to the rest of the team about this when I was England manager. Harry Kane's one of the best in the world. He's about an 87 % success rate, something like that. So even the very best miss one in 10. But the process that he goes through is the same for every penalty.

31:37And that gives him more confidence when he steps forward. It doesn't mean to say he's not nervous, doesn't mean to say he's going to score every one, but he's got a process. So, you know, when we were working with the team, we developed individual processes because we had guys that aren't taking them regularly. So if you think about Harry Maguire's penalty in the Euros finaling at Italy.

32:00Amol Rajan: Top right. Yeah. One of the all-time great penalties. But we could show you training footage of him doing that session after session. You know, we just got him to focus on just have that one penalty in your mind. No second thought. If you miss, you miss, but you've prepared for that. And so Trippier in Moscow, exactly the same. We could show you footage of him practicing that. So there's the individual strategy. And then we had team strategies, which the boys are still using today and some of which evolve, but you'll see the goalkeeper hand the ball to the next penalty taker, things like that, so that the opposition, you know, if you've got a Martinez for Argentina and you allow him to pass the ball to your next penalty taker, I mean, he's going to be all sorts going on in their ear.

32:49Amol Rajan: Is the key, you say everyone's got their own strategy, is the key thing making an early decision about where you're going to put it? If you're not a regular penalty taker, yeah, because an Ivan Toni will wait for the goalkeeper to move. That is his strategy. Right. So he's making a very late decision. But if you're not a regular penalty taker, then you don't need that confusion in your head. So we would say make your decision three days before. Practice that penalty. Practice executing it. If you hit it well enough, the goalkeeper, even if he goes the right way, probably won't save it. But as long as you stick with that theory, then we'll take the responsibility for, if it goes wrong, that's down to us because we've asked you to execute it that way.

33:35we've decided the batting order of penalty takers based on the data that we've got over a long period of time so we were we're trying to take more control of the process for the players but also less out you know less of the outcome falling on their shoulders if it doesn't go the

33:54Amol Rajan: right way so 30 years on there is a story now about you which is one of the most kind of amazing You may not feel this, I don't know, but from the outside, knowing you a bit as I do, this amazing kind of redemptive arc. You've gone from that moment, which might have been the making of you, to an incredible career leading England. But the mid-90s were a very different time when it came to mental health, sports psychology and the like. I'm not saying did you get the support you needed in terms of saying England let you down, but it's worth saying that we just didn't have team psychologists in the way that you would now.

34:30Amol Rajan: because you lived in Sutton Coalfield at the time. So what happens physically and mentally to you after the most public, if you don't mind me calling it this, the most public miss or failure that you can go through? What literally do you do? I mean, do you go back home and you're surrounded by paparazzi? What happens? That's exactly what happened. It's not what you need, is it? Well, no, but we didn't know any different in that day and age. I mean, I wasn't expecting... I remember my wife came to pick me up the next day from the team hotel. We drove back to Sutton Coldfield. We'd only moved into the house a couple of months before, so neighbours must have been chuffed to bits that they've suddenly got the world's media on their doorstep because it was only a small little cul-de-sac.

35:19But yeah, we literally had people knocking on the door once an hour, really. Can you come and give us an interview? can you come and talk about this at which point I'd already you know I fronted up immediately after the game I did the press interviews straight after the game because again I just felt that was the right thing to do so there was actually nothing else to be said but we were sort of for 48 hours trapped in our house because we didn't know what else to do I kind of phoned a friend and said look you've got to get yourself on holiday get out of there but I don't blame anybody for a lack of support that's just as it was you know now of course you'd you'd be thinking about people's welfare you'd be thinking about how do you support them we'd have psychologists with the team your club would be onto things the national federation would be onto things so i hope that we were able to provide better support for the boys that have missed for us in euros but as much support as you provide ultimately it's you that's got to get through it and you've got to draw on everything that's within you to you know the following season every away ground you play at you're getting pelters from the opposition fans yeah absolutely you know because it's a it's a chance to put their team in an effort you know try and put you off your game basically they're not seeing it in any other way but yeah walking down the high street people would just come up to you and and say, oh, you're the guy that missed the penalty, or blokes in vans driving past giving you sticks.

36:54Amol Rajan: You went to Bali with your wife, Alison, didn't you? Met a Buddhist monk, and even he wrote... I've come here to get away from you. Yeah, yeah. Spiritual healing, and then the Buddhist monk goes, aren't you that guy? Yeah, he had a copy of the sort of world news or whatever with a picture on the back. So it's, yeah, look, it was definitely life-changing, but, I mean, it took me a long time. most of my playing career, had I finished my career then, I played 700 matches in my career. But ultimately, had I not had this second chapter of my life as a manager, the narrative about those 15, 20 years would have been that one penalty kick.

37:37That's where you are in life, really. That's where these things can be framed.

37:42Amol Rajan: So apart from all the other kind of emotions going through, disappointment feeling you've maybe let your teammate down the kind of fear the siege mentality did you worry in those first awful 48 hours or in the weeks and months afterwards that your career and your life would really be defined by that moment yeah yeah for sure um i mean you you do have those nights and you'll have had them where you get under the bed covers and you think goodness me I can't believe what's happened today how do I how do I face tomorrow and um you know how how this is going to be constant how are we going to get through this and slowly you realize actually okay you know people start to write letters and I mean I had an amazing mailbag of letters which for which ranged from people who had unbelievable empathy and who had awful things that had happened in their lives who said, you know, look, this is just football and it gave you context and they had perhaps children with disabilities or they'd lost a loved one and you thought, my goodness, what am I worrying about?

38:52You know, this is so inconsequential in the overall scheme of life. I did have a guy who was in Cheltenham prison who said, I'm in Cheltenham prison and it's your fault because I got arrested the night that you missed the penalty and I went and got drunk and I beat some bloke up on the high street. So you had this complete range of letters that were in the mail bag. So, yeah, slowly you start to get context and you rationalise things and you get back into training with your club and you think, actually, right, come on, you've got to go again. Here we go. You've got to fight these things. And I've been fortunate that my narrative with England, there'll still be there'll still be elements of that that people will view some people will view negatively but

39:39Amol Rajan: I wonder if that guy's still in Cheltenham prison he can't blame you anymore hopefully he's rehabilitated himself if you're the guy who's written to Gareth Southgate in 1996 saying it's his fault you're in prison please do get in touch there's this wonderful wonderful line in your Dimbleby lecture which I watched I think for probably a third or fourth time in preparation for this where you say too many by the way people can find it online just search for Richard Dimbleby Lecture, Gareth Southgate. Too many young men are at risk of fearing failure precisely because they've had so few opportunities to experience and overcome it.

40:14They fail to try rather than try and fail.

40:20Amol Rajan: Those are very much the words of someone who missed a penalty and has grown from it, aren't they? Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, I think we have a tendency now as parents to try to help our kids avoid upset and disappointment. You know, we try to... We do too much for them. You know, we used to play out on the street. We'd fall off our bikes. We'd climb trees. We'd fall out of them. You know, we stop risk assessments, stop all of these things. Schools have to take... They have to have policies in play to make sure that everything's safe. but it means that our kids are not exposed to things going wrong quite as much as they should be you know you've how do you learn you yes you learn from listening to people but most things in life you've got to experience them you get them wrong you have to go away and reflect you come back you learn from it and you you improve and you know from very early stages we're not allowing kids to do that and then we also have moments where a lot of kids will think well if I don't try and put myself out there then I've got a bit of an excuse if it doesn't quite go right so instead of accepting that I've given my best and I've failed which in 96 you know that was my best if I failed painful but actually you grow from it whereas it I could have avoided taking the penalty or avoided putting myself in that position and I'd have had a get out but I wouldn't have learned as much and I wouldn't have improved and I wouldn't have had I wouldn't have had to find the things that I found from within me that helped shape my future.

42:05Amol Rajan: AI is changing the world but the dilemma we face in business is making AI work for us and not everyone else. That's where Google Cloud is delivering results for big UK customers and why I am so pleased that they are launch partners of the Amol Rajan Connection. Their work is based on 20 years of research and development. And as part of that, Google Cloud's AI assistant, Gemini, helps each company design a unique platform, bringing together fragmented data and workflows. Discover more about making AI work for your business, cloud.google.com forward slash AI. What was the mindset that prompted you 30 years after that penalty to say to the Football Association, you didn't want to renew your contract as England manager?

42:53Amol Rajan: Why did you walk away from that? Because I hope you don't mind me saying, but you know, you were extraordinarily successful England manager, almost uniquely so. They offered you a presumably very lucrative contract, and yet you decided to walk away from money, dream job, profile, stature, and all that stuff to, as we're going to discuss, devote yourself to helping people less fortunate than yourself, which is amazing. But why did you walk away? Sorry, walk away's got a negative connotation. I don't mean it by that. No, no, no. I mean, why did you... It was the right time to leave. Yeah. I felt it was the right time to leave.

43:27We'd had an amazing journey. And when I took over, we were, I think, 14th in the world. We hadn't won a knockout game for 10 years. So, you know, if you look at what we managed to do from where we started, two finals, two semifinals, amazing experience. And for most of that, there was a momentum and an enjoyment and the engagement with the fans. But I had become divisive. You know, I'd become a divisive figure with the fans, which I didn't think was helping the team. You know, I think the narrative, particularly around that last Euros, but for a period leading into that as well was, you know, basically we can go further with a different manager.

44:16How does that make you feel? well you you yeah i mean it's not great for your for your sense of uh um happiness and for your sense of you know i i devoted 10 years of my life as a player to playing for england and more than 10 years to the fa developing english football so by that you mean both as under 21 manager and also england manager yeah yeah so you know i i've given my life to trying to make this work you know I couldn't be more engaged in it it couldn't have meant any anything there was no greater honor for me than doing it so you know and then you've delivered the best results in 60 years and there's still this air of well you know we need change so yeah.

45:02Did that come from

45:03Amol Rajan: the fans or did it come from the journalists? Well I think I think the two feed each other in the end don't they you know I think journalists write the opinions that the fans generally have and I think there was a push towards that and there becomes a momentum to these stories. After eight years, I think there's a thing called incumbency fatigue, isn't there, which I think politicians have as well. People have heard most of the things you've got to say and we were very close but we hadn't achieved that last bit which everybody wanted. So people look for a simple solution to complex problems. That's always what happens in life.

45:44You know, it's interesting.

45:45Amol Rajan: Before we started filming, we've got an amazing team working on the Amol Rajan Connection. I'm very proud to work with them. And this wonderful guy called Ed, who's on the other side of the glass. And I always ask the team, what would you want to know? You know, I've got Gareth Southgate coming in. What do you want to know? And Ed said, I just want to know what it's like to live with that level of scrutiny. I mean, there's the fun stuff. I think the less we say about waistcoats, the better. But every decision for every match, every player, coaching staff, formation, tactics, substitute, I mean, everything poured over by the world in real time.

46:23Amol Rajan: What is it like to experience that degree of relentless scrutiny? Yeah, it's very hard to explain because I'm not sure there are many things you can compare it to. I don't think it's as hard and as complex as Prime Minister, but you're close in terms of that sort of profile and when a tournament is on, you can have 30 million people in the country watching and they've all got an opinion. They all have their favourites that should be playing. So you have got to keep your nerve in terms of not being influenced by all this noise, not being influenced by opinions that don't have all the information that you do.

47:06So you're very reliant on the staff that are close to the team to give you alternative opinions to your own and to make you think.

47:16Amol Rajan: Do you try and screen it out? Because I know a lot of CEOs who say we just don't read it. Don't look at the comments or newspaper articles. If it's an important article and I've got to make a decision, show me. But if it's not, I don't want to see it and don't show me social media. What was your approach to that? During tournaments, I learned to withdraw myself from that. I didn't put the television on other than watching other matches. I didn't go searching social media that said you're still aware of what's being written because you have to do a press conference every three days so you know the line of questioning and where it's heading you've got to be briefed by your press officer as to what might be coming and so they're giving you the background to some of the stories that might be running and my mum's texting me saying oh the Daily Mail are killing you she said it hot but they're the sorts of things that can happen what did she say to you after the year of 96 miss?

48:16yes well that's not something she had like regurgitated really because bless her it's a good example she said to me in a brief moment she said oh why didn't you just belt the thing and then she got doorstepped you know I mean she'd have been in her late 60s then doorstepped by the media what did you say to your son that was the head you know why didn't you just belt it son was the headline so she was mortified which I you know I didn't it didn't bother me at all you know I know what had happened but yeah so you've got you've got an awareness of what's going on um but I think leaders in any space um you know leading is hard and leading in the public eye is very hard i've got tremendous admiration for everybody that's in those positions because whether you're the ceo of a major company or you're in the cabinet or you're head of the bbc you know i was with tim davy recently so looking 10 years younger well exactly exactly so you know everybody's carrying those pressures and everybody has an opinion of the decisions you make but they don't actually have all of the information and and they don't understand the complexities of all those decisions that that these leaders have to make so one of the things that is so interesting about you

49:40Amol Rajan: and this will get us later on into the state of football before we turn to some of the work you're doing today is i know that you spend you are held up understandably because of your record and because of your character as an exemplar of leadership, which I know probably makes you feel a bit awkward, but the fact is people look to you for it. And what people may not know is, which I discovered through the research we did, you spent a huge amount of time reading about leadership, going around the world, speaking to other coaches about leadership, and actually doing the courses. I think when you got offered the Middlesbrough job, which was one of your great achievements, because that team was really struggling.

50:14Amol Rajan: I think you got the 12th or 13th, amazing achievement. You were still doing a leadership management course. Can I ask you some specific questions? And this is really, I would say this is advice, particularly for young leaders, thinking about how they approach building a business or an institution or a leadership role in football. How did you approach, as leader, making hard decisions? By which I mean, I guess, decisions that will really annoy someone. Yeah. I guess the best learning I had for that was at Middlesbrough. If I think about, you know, I was playing, I was 35 years old. We played Europa League final and I still had a year's contract left.

50:57But that summer, Steve McLaren was our manager, became England manager and there was a vacancy as manager and the chairman asked me to take the job. So that was way ahead of my schedule of thinking I'd like to coach or manage.

51:12Amol Rajan: You were mid-30s at this point? Yeah, 35, coming up 36. so three years in the Premier League with no grounding at all I mean it's not a decision you would make now but Steve Gibson at Middlesbrough I think recognized I had leadership qualities and he trusted the ethics of my decision making and he knew I understood football so I now looking back I understand why he made that decision but of course there's so much that you don't know and one of the biggest things I learned was that I put off making tough decisions during the first couple of years there maybe to change a member of staff that wasn't a cultural fit or to be stronger on discipline with a player that had stepped out of line and ultimately the impact of some of those decisions was relegation I mean there's lots of reasons for relegation but if I look at what I could have done differently not making firmer decisions earlier I think had a knock-on effect don't delay the tough call yeah because then three years later I'm having to have even harder conversations with people because we're making them redundant because we've lost the premier league money so if you avoid a hard decision the decision doesn't go away it just it just gets harder yeah you're probably pushing it down the line you know I I think a lot of businesses underachieve because people put off having tough conversations.

52:42Amol Rajan: If you said that to Tim Davey recently, we might get into that. On a related point, how did you approach difficult conversations? I mean, these are players who get dropped. These are players who step out of line. These are teammates who aren't performing. I mean, if I may say, you've got a reputation for doing that well. How did you do it? I think first and foremost, put yourself in the shoes of the person receiving the news. So not a pleasant conversation for them. As hard as it is for you, it's damn sight harder for them. You know, they're maybe at a World Cup. They've waited all their life to get there.

53:22They're not going to start the next game. That's a massive moment in their life and their family and their entourage, if you like. so you've got to give them the respect firstly of making sure you don't just put the team sheet on the board and let them find out from somebody other than yourself you've got to try to deliver that information as empathetically as possible and equally you've got to accept that you're not going to be their favorite for the next few days now really you know i had strong enough relationships with people that you know most of the players in our squad at some point over the eight ten years I worked with them at under 21 or senior level at some point they'd been out of the team or out of the squad and then back in and so over a longer period of time I think they would feel a level of trust a level of understanding a level of mutual respect there'll be things they weren't happy with I wasn't happy when I was dropped as a player but I you know there's a there's a respect I can only show respect and then it's up to them how they respond there must have been some players that you knew would be devastating no of course yeah because as I said you're waiting your whole life to go to a world cup and then there are moments where there are players that have done so well for you as a manager like Raheem Sterling or Jordan Henderson where you know they were a crucial part of why we'd done so well Raheem scored some unbelievably important goals for us crucial part of the team and then there was a point where club-wise he wasn't playing so well and now you've got to you know you've got to say look sorry but you know it's almost like we were in love with you but now we're in love with somebody else you know we've got to evolve the team that's the right thing for the team we've got Bakayo Saka coming through what we've got at the time who would have been coming through we still had Marcus Reyes, Jude Bellingham's coming through so that's so hard because you want loyalty from players you want to breed that connection with them and then all the great things they've done for you that you're hugely appreciative of but you have to make a call for the team that's to move to the to the young player coming through and that's hard for everybody to take.

55:46Bob Iger the legendary boss of Disney says your vision as a leader is only as good as your ability

55:53Amol Rajan: to communicate it how important was it for you early on in any job Crystal Palace 23 Middlesbrough 35 England in your mid-40s to communicate really clearly a vision of where you wanted to get to and how did you do it yeah I mean I'd be far more conscious of that now You've learnt more about it. Yeah. And at the beginning with England, I wouldn't say I necessarily got that right when I was younger. But again, by listening to other people, reading books, my own lived experiences, you recognise that articulating that vision and making it really clear to people where you're heading, but then what their role is and what you expect from them and the culture that you expect to create, that constant communication with people and and repetition of a lot of those messages is important um and the consistency of that approach is very important how did the dear england letter come to be part of the mythology of gary southgate did you expect it to be that i mean so this is people should know the context is post george floyd's death in america is killing by a police officer, COVID.

57:10I think you were invited to write a piece for the Players' Tribune

57:14Amol Rajan: and it becomes this part of the fabric of modern England. Did you sort of anticipate how it becomes such a... No, no, definitely not, no. I mean, I actually initially did an interview with the Players' Tribune and there's a journalist called Ben Haynes that was working for them at the time and he got back in touch with the FA and said, look, I think this would make a brilliant letter. And we kind of pieced the interview into a letter format, basically, because I'd spoken about my pride in being English, but to me that stemmed from my granddad serving in the Royal Marines and historic things, but a lot of those things weren't applicable to modern England or youngsters today and how they would view, you know, we're a much more multicultural society.

58:08Our team was multicultural backgrounds. So, you know, there's a guess of a national, a bit of work for us as a nation of what is our identity? You know, I think we're slightly scrambling with that. You know, that was probably far easier years and years and years ago. and maybe that's something we've got to talk about because there's some wonderful traits about being British, being English that are right to keep forever and there are some things that need to evolve and we need greater acceptance and tolerance of each other and I think we haven't quite in our minds sorted that out. By the way, I don't know what that piece of work looks like or how you undertake it but I think we're grappling with that as a country.

58:59Amol Rajan: Did you intend to start a national conversation about it? I mean, you were even a manager, right? Or did you just think you were writing a nice little piece for the Players' Tribute? Correct. Didn't know that Joseph Fiennes would be playing you in a James Graham. Definitely not. But I think, again, some of these things, timing. When I delivered the Dimbleby lecture, by pure chance, Adolescence was released that weekend. So these two moments talking about young men, there was a momentum when the Dear England letter was published we'd been criticised the weekend before really strongly for taking the knee before a friendly up at Middlesbrough with England and the letter landed and I think gave everybody some context behind what we were standing for as a team, what it meant to us to play for England, the pride we have but also this you know hopefully forward thinking view of discussions that we need to have and understanding we need to have for each other so no this wasn't an agenda I went seeking this was you know the top but the timing of it it just took a life of its own really.

1:00:15Amol Rajan: NatWest partners the Amol Rajan Connection it's the bank that I've used for 25 years since that first day I walked into a South London branch with my dear dad. What sets NatWest apart is its mission to help people turn ambition into action, from taking a first financial step to building a business or planning what comes next. It is next-level banking with practical support, ideas and expertise behind it. I'm very grateful to them for their support. As they say, let's do this. I've read this letter so many times, as have so many people, and I've watched the James Graham play and I've seen this TV adaptation.

1:00:51Amol Rajan: Can I ask you just to read out the final paragraph of Dear England? this is a seminal letter that you wrote I don't suppose you need glasses do you? I'm not at that point yet the reality is that the result is just a small part of it when England play there's so much more at stake it's about how we conduct ourselves on and off the pitch how we bring people together how we inspire and unite how we create memories that last beyond the 90 minutes that last beyond the summer that last forever I think about all the young kids who'll be watching this summer, filling out their first wall charts. No matter what happens, I just hope that their parents, teachers and club managers will turn to them and say, look, that's the way to represent your country.

1:01:40That's what England is about. That is what's possible. And then I said, if we can do that, it will be a summer to be proud of.

1:01:49Amol Rajan: It's a little part of that letter, it almost moves me to tears listening to it. It was a little part of that letter kind of almost a letter to your boyhood self well definitely I mean it was yeah my journey with England was as a fan you know I remember coming home from school to watch England play in the 1982 World Cup I remember having beer and curry with my mates watching 1990 World Cup you know and then from 96 onwards I'm in in the middle of the story so yeah England people talk about England players but they're all England fans as well but I did what hit me after that and for the sort of subsequent five years as England manager the national team, it does mean more than just football and people do look they see a reflection of their country in the team they want pride they see an image of themselves they want to relate to it and yeah it isn't just it isn't just football how you go about it and the way that you do it does matter to people so i i really want i mean i really want to talk to you about lost young boys we'll get to that in a minute but just before we do that i really do want to talk to you about the state of football because I think there is a reading of your career and your reputation which is almost like a kind of attempt not to re-moralize football but to make sure that football It sticks to its founding principles and values and recognises what it means beyond the pitch.

1:03:32Amol Rajan: And there's a lot of people who think, you know, football is not one thing. You know, the kind of Saturday club game down the local park, jumpers for goalposts is one thing. And then there's kind of, you know, global football over here. But there's a lot of people that think that maybe something's gone fundamentally wrong. There's something rotten in the state of football. And there's a lot of fans that don't trust the people that run football. are they right those fans to have lost a bit of trust in the people running the game do you think and i say this particularly in the context of the quite i mean i could barely believe it when i was reading it out on the radio news not so long ago that there was a serious attempt by the boss of football if you think of gianni infantino as that to sell not the whole of the game but a share of the game quite recently after he'd had an encounter with president trump i mean are fans right to worry about the state of the global game?

1:04:22Well, I think sometimes we have to take ourselves back to why did we start playing?

1:04:29Amol Rajan: Exactly. So, you know, when I used to hand a player his first England cap and he gets his legacy number, you know, why did you start playing? What was your dream when you were a five-year-old kid knocking a ball around in the back garden or knocking a ball around in the street or wherever that was. Fundamentally, we should always go back to that point. Football is a game, a sport. In my head, I was always brought up. The referee's decision is final. Forget VAR and things like that. Respect the referee's decision. Now, some people will say, oh, that's why you didn't win as much as you should have won.

1:05:15And in my head, that's a nonsense because nobody cares more than me about winning. Am I prepared to break rules to win? No, I'm not. By the way, was I prepared to foul people because I was angry on the football pitch? Yes. So there were some rules that I probably did break and was immediately punished for. But when we're looking at the running of the game, when I first got the England job, it was a strange period for the FA, Sam Allardyce had just left under a cloud I took over I remember in my first press conference saying I love the sport I don't love the industry I don't love the commercial industry I didn't like when I was at Middlesbrough you're trying to sign a player there's agents involved agents want certain amounts of money just for a player to sign for your club there's all this sort of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that we're seeing now that's being exposed currently and that's an awful look for the game, whether that's been the Manchester City case or what happened with FIFA in the summer, none of that is good for football.

1:06:29There are no winners from any of those situations. So I think fans are saying, you know, we need better leadership of the game. And that's been very clear at a global level through what's happened during the World Cup with the rescinding of the red card and post-World Cup with the attempted sale of the rights to the World Cup television deal.

1:06:55Amol Rajan: Let's take those two things in turn. I mean, I didn't set up this YouTube channel to come to Gianni Infantino's defence, but let me try for a moment on those two things. The rescinding of the red card, why was that wrong in principle? Well, you're interfering with the refereeing of the game. so there is a referee then there is a disciplinary panel and that should be it if somebody in government in governance starts to interfere with the refereeing of the game even before the World Cup Cristiano Ronaldo he had a suspension that was overhanging he did an appearance at an event that looked to be linked to FIFA and lo and behold, you know, he was allowed to play in the first game of the World Cup.

1:07:46Had he not been Cristiano Ronaldo, and I think he's a wonderful player by the way, but I don't think that would have happened. So, you know, already we're greying the areas of what, you know, what are we interfering with and what are we allowing the game to decide, the natural order of the game.

1:08:04Amol Rajan: And the point about sport is it derives its meaning from the rules. Because the point about the rules is they apply equally to everyone. If they don't apply equally to everyone, then you undermine the integrity of sport. But what about Infantino, who I'd love to issue an invitation if you'd like to come on this show. But what he would say about the selling of a part of football is, sorry, Gareth, but football is a business. It does need to make money. It is a billion or perhaps one day a trillion dollar industry. And that what he was trying to do is to encourage a bit of private investment in a little bit of the game in order to grow the game into sort of new markets.

1:08:39Amol Rajan: China and other markets it could be bigger in. Was that so wrong in principle? Well, there are commercial decisions that are made and have to be made that have benefited the game as we know it. We have fantastic stadiums now for the fans to sit in. We've had the best league in the world because commercially we can attract the best players. So I'm not against things thriving commercially and I hope you do extremely well, Am I with you? I'm not against earning money. However, how you go about that and when you're in charge of those television rights, keeping the rest of your board informed, keeping the rest of the football family informed about what's going on behind the scenes and the rationale for doing that and the discussions.

1:09:34I mean, we're still waiting for the release of documents around all those discussions. They haven't been released yet. So, yeah, those sorts of things are why fans are losing the trust. And frankly, people within the game lose trust when those sorts of decisions are made. I mean, there are some brilliant custodians of football working within the game. Well, local level, but also professional level. Not everybody at professional level is looking to make money and exploit fans and exploit the rights. There are some brilliant, brilliant people within all football clubs, within all federations that want to do the right things for the growth of the game, men's and women's.

1:10:18They deserve exceptional leadership.

1:10:22Amol Rajan: And yet, this might be overtaken by events and we'll update it accordingly if need be. But as we sit here today, very recently, I read the Premier League statement about what happened at Manchester City. And it's a long statement because it is quite astonishing that over 100 allegations of basically financial misconduct, sham contracts, dodgy deals, all of which, by the way, I should be very clear, Manchester City deny, even though the Premier League have said that they were found to have done wrong. it's an extraordinary catalogue of terrible behaviour. I'm just thinking for Man City fans, I mean they've won the title I think eight times since the new owners came along.

1:11:06Amol Rajan: There must be a very strong sense of betrayal. I mean what did you make of those allegations and the discovery that they'd been seen to have done wrong? Well of course this has been, this case has been going on behind the scenes for four or five years so it's not new news.

1:11:26and the first thought that comes to me is because I understand the complexity of all of these things. So there'll be the tribal fans' response to punish Manchester City as much as we can, relegate them, fine them, do whatever you can.

1:11:45Amol Rajan: Strip them of the titles. This is outrageous. We got relegated because of this. We missed Europe. We could have won the title. so there's all of this you know I then am thinking about if I'm working because I've been in football boardrooms I've been in meetings with UEFA I've been in meetings with FIFA I've been in all these spaces and I know how complicated all of this is you know my underlying thought is none of this is good for football and there are no winners because you know if you're at the Premier League for a very brief moment you might feel justified that all the flack you've had for this case taking so long this is why it's taken so long and there's the verdict and i'm sure there's an element of justification in that and then there's this realization how the hell do we deal with it deal with all of this because you know the possibility of all the different legal cases that emerge from this, how long this could still take to take, what's the right sort of punishment, how do you keep the whole game on track.

1:12:56That's unbelievably complex.

1:12:59Amol Rajan: But you say fans deserve better leadership, you're known for your leadership qualities. What has gone wrong and why with leadership in football? I mean, you were talking at the National Game of England, we're talking at the Global Game, I mean, there's a common theme here, which is poor leadership. Why has that happened, do you think? Why has leadership been so poor i think there are moments and there are some leaders that power changes people or people use power in different ways and i think some people forget you know what their fundamental responsibilities are when they're in those roles so you know you're there if you're leading global football you're there for the good of the game and and by the way there are lots of agendas within that because it's a global game so what's important for European football compared to South American football compared to African football is all slightly different in terms of what's needed developmental wise or competition wise so not an easy role but fundamentally in any leadership role you've got to be thinking about what are the right things to do what are the principled things to do what are the right values to uphold um so that's an enormous responsibility and and people just aren't seeing that power is also pretty addictive which is why it's amazing that you decided to step away from england you must have had apart from the fa you must have had not just in this country frankly but other countries people coming forward and offering you all sorts of juicy deals and contracts.

1:14:39Amol Rajan: Would you go back into the Premier League and manage a club?

1:14:46I mean, I have to say I don't see a scenario where I do that. Why? Well, firstly, towards the end of my time with England, I stopped enjoying.

1:15:04at the very least for a period the wins keep you going by the end I didn't even enjoy the wins for any longer than a couple of minutes so I've hardly watched football I went to the Champions League final the year after I left England in 2025 I went to the FA Cup final to see my team Palace win their first trophy I've not been to a football ground since so my sort of desire to be involved in football has changed you know I've loved the last 18 months of my life I've had 37 years where my sense of self depended on did I win or lose on Saturday and actually I've loved having different experiences I've loved meeting people like yourself myself curious about what's been going on for young people I've met politicians I've met people in media industry I've learned about leadership in all sorts of areas I've traveled around the world learning things so I've just enjoyed playing a different film in my life if I was 46 I might feel differently about that you know I might think right I've got 10 years there's things I want to go and achieve within football I need to prove myself but the beauty of England was I was coaching and there was a purpose to it we've talked about what you know what being English what being British means to me so I was trying to fundamentally I went there to make English football better and I ended up becoming the England manager that that was the sequence of events if you go to a club there's not that same sense of purpose um there's do these owners have the values that i have can we win you know what what is winning but you know i a criticism of me would be well you didn't win with england so if you're going to try to prove people wrong then well you've got to be a certain type of club that can win but what is that I mean we're just I'm picking I'm reveling what that has made it look like I'm not interested in survival and you know just being a manager because it's a good salary and survival that doesn't excite me the one of the beauties with England was we we could win we could create history we could break new ground so I'd rather you know we've got media company that just started we've got other commercial aspects we've got this work of purpose on young people and you know how do we get more young people back into work so I'd rather make a bigger difference in my life in other areas than be at one training ground and look I've amazing admiration for people who want to do that and who are still coaching in their 60s and 70s and you know brilliant but I've given a lot of my life to football.

1:18:11I've given every ounce I had and I just fancy a different period of my life.

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1:18:56Amol Rajan: Just before we turn to it, it is an extraordinary thing to hear someone who has operated at the level that you have operated at say as you did a moment ago by the end it was the wins that kept me going and even those wins i only joined i only enjoyed for a couple of seconds why was that what why was it that by the end 37 years in football you could have that big a win against that good a team with that stature of players but it gives you five minutes of fleeting pleasure why was that Yeah, I guess because there was this relentless analysis of every decision and criticism of everything. From you or others?

1:19:41No, from media, fans. That's the environment we were in in that last tournament in particular. And when we won, we beat Holland as a coach. It's about as good as it can get. We played really well in the game. we made substitutions that you know went on, created and scored the winning goal we made the right changes tactically during the game we qualify for our first final on foreign shores ever you know, that's a pretty good night's work, really it's about as good as it can get but within I did my bit celebrating on the pitch a bit of dad dancing with the fans but then immediately I was thinking we have to win on Sunday because if we don't win on Sunday, then I know what the narrative will be.

1:20:34So straight away you're on to who's injured, what does training need to be tomorrow, who are we playing in the final, where's the opposition analysis? Like the win was gone, it was done. So you start to think, well actually where does the enjoyment come? Because if the enjoyment is only coming right at the end, if we've got a trophy, A, that might never come, although I believe it will for England, but they're quite scarce moments, frankly.

1:21:04Amol Rajan: I wonder, and this gets us into your work now, but I wonder if there's a difference between, yeah, the Gareth Southgate after eight years, who was, you know, who's exhausted and, you know, that criticism was getting to you. But when you started out, I was looking over with the team, some of the plans that you had in place for fixing the English football club, which was, sorry, the English football team, which was, it wasn't one thing, it was lots of marginal gains. It was about improvement in the squad. It was about better on-pitch performance, maybe that penalty stuff. It was that Dave Brailsford thing, the famous cycling coach, a series of marginal gains.

1:21:38Amol Rajan: And I wonder if that's almost like a kind of microcosm of how you look at the country you love now, England. There is no one fix. You know, England's a country. You know the prime minister very well. You know the previous prime minister and the previous prime minister. There are lots of challenges. There's lots of issues. But it's almost like there are these different things that we have to apply a series of different solutions to. And a bit like you tried to fix England by kind of trying to address a number of different things, is it almost like you're trying to fix England as a country by looking at the crisis amongst lost boys?

1:22:09Well, I mean, I might be able to play a tiny part in affecting one or two tiny things, but I'm not looking to fix England. But what I would observe is, and I have, I've met... I mean, there were five prime ministers that served while I was England manager. That's normally the other way around, by the way. But I've met another five since I left, just at various functions and had fascinating conversations because... They're impressive people, aren't they? Incredibly impressive. And, you know, to a man and woman, want to make a difference. You know, I think they set out wanting to make the country a better place.

1:22:51you know one of the things we had to confront first with the team was results are poor you know we'd just lost to Iceland we'd been this period without winning knockout matches we had to be more transparent about where we sat and we need to change the way we do things and there's some bad news that needs to be delivered now of course that's very hard for any politician because if you really set out clearly the state of play and that there's going to be a pain, that's probably not a good way to get elected because people want to hear hope, but actually hope can quite often be empty. So, you know, I have huge admiration when people spell out there are some difficult decisions that need to be made, but we can prosper in the mid to long term if we're prepared to suffer this bit of pain over the next period.

1:23:48And so, you know, I think it's very interesting where all the things you said, we had lots of areas we needed to improve with the football team. And that is the same. If you looked just at what's happening for young people, we've talked about men but girls as well, well, why have we got just over a million kids not in employment, educational training? Well, part of that is education system. You know, part of that is the fact that kids who aren't academic, the vocational route, the more practical route sort of disappeared over the years. the opportunities for work experience have reduced and that's meant that so many employers are saying kids are coming in they're not work ready there are decisions that have been made that have had unintended consequences like the minimum wage so you know kids that could have worked in bars or could have worked in retail or you know employers tell me they're reluctant to employ a youngster because it's going to cost them as much as employing somebody older and the older person is probably going to make fewer mistakes so there are all these areas that are ultimately leading to uh you know reduction in apprenticeships and so we've now got a generation that believe you know they're they're losing hope they don't see a pathway they think even if they go to university there are lots of kids with degrees that are out of work and i've guess what i've now got a huge debt but they're sitting there saying hang on a minute i did everything the system asked me to do and i'm now in this position so as you say there's not there's not

1:25:40Amol Rajan: just one thing going on this is an incredibly complex area but it's worth splitting the overall picture because i am like you really quite obsessed with this subject no i know it is just It is just a fact that in material circumstances, people who are, say, 25 and under, and you've got young kids yourselves, roughly that sort of age, are just less likely to have as materially wealthy lives as my generation, I'm 43, or a generation older. And people generally put that on the three Ps. So pay, their wages are lower, pensions, they find the idea of getting a pension, as other people did, far school, and property, you know, house prices being what they are.

1:26:15Amol Rajan: within that which is a sort of broken contract between the generations it's the first time since the really mid 19th century that our children aren't going to be richer than ourselves that's a fundamental change in the country it's a breach of the contract between the generations within that you've got this smaller group which is actually very big which is sort of in crisis and the neats that you mentioned it is just an astonishing fact that in our country in the present day you've got basically a million people and it is rising who are kind of exiting society and what is so unspeakably sad is that the vast majority of them will struggle to get back in because once you're in that trap it's very hard you lose the confidence and some of them will end up in very very dark places and then within that you've got a separate issue to do with um to do with young men i think quite a useful way of framing this is is the documentary made for the bbc and the last Last time we spoke at length was after that came out.

1:27:13Amol Rajan: So I really recommend it to people. It's on the iPlayer. It's called Gareth Southgate, Changing the Game for Young Men, I think. And you went back to Middlesbrough, a place very meaningful to you. What did you find in the course of that documentary about the crisis that, let's talk about men specifically, that young men are facing? Well, I think I sat with three boys who were, you know, applying for jobs, couldn't find jobs in the area um various degrees of academic achievement but you know not not high academic achievement but if you think about Middlesbrough as a town which I know well you know historically jobs in the steel industry jobs in in the mines slightly outside the town jobs in the chemical industry so many of those industries have disappeared so this is not an uncommon story for jobs that you know a lot of manual jobs that men would have been employed in in the past historic in the post-war years a lot a bit a much bigger chunk of the economy with the male economy in particular was men literally selling physical labor like going to work shifting things using muscle getting a decent wage and coming home yeah absolutely and and so much of that has disappeared so in terms of opportunity for for those kids you know they bars of clothes you know so many bars in the area of clothes so you're saying well you know can't you get bar well look look at the high street the high street was desolate really um so and you know this is a familiar story in lots of regional areas that um investment is required business needs to be encouraged to thrive um so they don't see a way forward it's not possible for them to come and live in london and find work because they can't afford to come and live in london so so they're in this cycle really um and there are you know there are so many other aspects to that where they look around them um that lack of opportunity then all of a sudden you know the classic is well there's the gang down the the road they feel like they don't belong so maybe youth clubs that used to pick up kids that might have been in that position and help guide them have disappeared so you know they're now the alternative is the gang down the street who might be selling drugs and then you're into a world of well you know maybe that's a method of earning money and I can bring money in and they see a life that part of that life looks attractive So there are all these little themes within that, a number of kids that are excluded from school early because it's not good for the schools to have low achievers because of their off-dead reports.

1:30:07Amol Rajan: If you're excluded, it's not easy to get back in. Absolutely. If you watch that documentary, you'll see you spend a lot of time in prison where the statistics are shocking. It's worth saying, so de-industrialisation is a big part of it. In places like Middlesbrough, that's a huge challenge. There's also a separate thing which I know you wanted to be very careful in how you address because of the danger of stigmatising And I like you don't want to do this But we have had a transformation in fatherhood in this country in the last few decades It's really it is quite extraordinary how in the last 50 years There's now 3.2 million lone parent families in the UK Mothers represent about 85 % of those lone parents And research published by the Centre for Social Justice you mentioned their Lost Boys report, indicates that over 1 million children in the UK are growing up with no contact whatsoever with their biological father.

1:30:58Amol Rajan: And just to show how things have changed in the space of a generation, in 1970, at the age of 14, roughly 21 % of boys might have experienced parental separation. That's since 1970, it's grown from 21 % to 50%. Now, none of this is to stigmatize individuals. It's certainly not to stigmatize single mums who do an absolutely heroic job. But there is a fundamental transformation in fatherhood in this country. And re-watching the Dimbleby lecture, one of your big concerns is role models. And it's just kind of common sense that if you have an increase in or a weakening in fatherhood, you have a weakening in the traditional role model, don't you?

1:31:42You do, yeah. Yeah, look, through osmosis, I used to watch what my father did. Now, you know, there will be people whose fathers behaved in a way that perhaps wasn't a good role model. So it's, again, not as simple as saying fathers have to be there. And as you rightly say, there are single mothers that are working, raising kids, doing an amazing job. But there are moments with my kids where they want mum for something and there are moments where they come to dad you know and that's not just for put my hand in my pocket but but you know we have different skill sets we have different um qualities there are just things that you know as a as a guy i can talk to my son about that my wife can't so i do think there is a need for us to recognize people might separate us completely understandable that is what happens but as a father you've got to keep playing a part in those kids lives and play a positive part in their lives and if that's not possible what other male role models can we fill these kids lives with because there are far fewer male teachers in schools I've already mentioned youth clubs that have kind of disappeared where you might have picked up that male mentor

1:33:06Amol Rajan: it's extraordinary how few male teachers there are by the way it's one of the points to come across in your documentary so fewer than one in four school teachers in the uk are men and the figures under 15 in primary schools yeah it's really very few men in primary and secondary schools by the way in prisons 95 of the uk prison population is male and young men 18 to 24 and you meet a lot in the documentary represent a very large share of both violent crime and perpetrators and victims. There is something going on with young men. Yeah, no question. And it's a build-up of all the things we've discussed, so that lack of role models in their lives, the lack of somebody to have the difficult conversation that Alan Smith had with me at 16 to push me and get me back into line.

1:33:52You know, boys do some ridiculous things. You know, players that I coach, you'd be thinking everything was fine and then they'd go and do something. You'd think, well, why on earth has he done that? You know, we do do that as boys. We do do some ridiculous stuff as we're growing up and brains forming and, you know, we can get ourselves into scrapes that girls, generally speaking, don't. So you need pulling back into line and you need these people around you to help, mentor, guide you. And what he encourages me is that when I filmed the documentary and it aired, my goodness, the number of guys that came forward wanting to help.

1:34:38Exactly. But actually nobody quite knows where to go.

1:34:42Amol Rajan: But also the difference you can make with a really specific and targeted intervention. So the documentary ends on a very hopeful note where one of the young men that you're sat opposite, I think in Middlesbrough, gets a bit of work experience and it's out, it's very physical. He finds a sense of meaning and there's a camaraderie. And it's like, this is not a hopeless situation. The point is to grip it and sort of, and try and do something about it. And talk about doing something about it. You've, I think, just been, is a sign of your commitment to the cause, to Holland, the Netherlands, with Alan Milburn.

1:35:12Amol Rajan: Alan Milburn, who was a very big figure in the Labour government in the late 90s, has come back as really the kind of, we use the word Saar, but he's really the guy. Today's Labour government, he grew up in a council house and council estate in Newcastle he's the guy charged with trying to address the NEATS issue what did you see in the Netherlands that you think we could learn from this is a show about winning the future about trying to build a better tomorrow what can young people in this country take from what you learnt in the Netherlands to build a better future for themselves yeah the biggest thing was a cultural pride in looking after their young people so there is a societal expectation that we're going to do all we can firstly we're going to do all we can to keep them in the education system so the development of a young person we ask them what you know when kids are excluded from school what you know what's the and they kind of look to this say what what why would we exclude them you know we we've got to get in there and support them and help them.

1:36:18Because very often it's kids with learning difficulties who find themselves losing confidence. Some of their behaviours might be unacceptable within the group. But instead of having the time, schools having the time or the resource to be able to provide them the specialist help they need, we're excluding them. And so the problem is somebody else is to deal with. Now, there's going to be a question, I think, in the Milburn Report about, you know, are we, you know, more and more kids are being diagnosed. Is that, are we over-diagnosing? I don't know whether the, what the rights and wrongs of that are, but the reality is those numbers are rising.

1:37:01Very sharply. You know, numbers of kids. Things like neurodiversity, yeah. Yeah, you know, autism, ADHD. The fact is those numbers are rising. Therefore, we need to provide support and help for those kids. because otherwise the path is they're excluded from school, much harder to find work, means they're ending up in drawing on the welfare rather than contributing, feeling good about themselves, in a job, earning their own money, actually contributing tax and benefiting society.

1:37:33Amol Rajan: So extraordinary stats about the extent of the prison population that not only are neurodiverse but were undiagnosed with that. There's a whole load of work that needs to be done on that. you also um looking what you wrote about it on linkedin which i i get the impression you enjoy posting on linkedin because they're quite long pieces i enjoyed reading it but you had this very striking takeaway about the possibility of pursuing a non-academic path that quite early at 12 what do they do in holland that you think we could learn from there yeah basically and look this might be a little bit too early 12 but at 12 they basically sit exams or they they have assessments and they either go a full academic path or they might go a very specific scientific sort of academic path or they go into more skills-based vocational hands-on type training so it's sort of three pathways there's vocational and then the academic split between quite sciencey and more arts and humanities yeah yeah and if you think about you know i was better at certain subjects than others we all have that I've heard your school teachers say on Desert Island Discs and various profiles that you were very bright that they were hoping that you'd go on to quite an academic career they must have been easily pleased but I was reasonable at maths but I ended up in a group that was too high for me so a good example of I think had I been in a group that was operating at my pace my speed I think I'd have been more confident at maths so it felt like a good thing I'm in the top maths set actually I was struggling like hell I'm worried about putting my hand up to ask a question because I don't want to be the buffoon in the class in my eyes and yet actually you know I needed to ask questions I needed more help I needed to work at a slower pace had I been two groups further down I'm not going to say I'd have ended up being a mathematician but I'd have probably had a better outcome and felt more confident about my maths now if you put kids who aren't academically wired and you're not allowing them to excel so for example i've met parents who've said my son loved woodwork he was brilliant at it but school don't do it anymore but they stigmatize it or they think it's woodwork you should be doing physics well that well that's right so we've got to we've got to say that physics isn't better than woodwork it's different your skills and your qualities are just in a different area and you can have amazing careers going either route and you can earn a lot of money by the way going either route but you need to be encouraged and we need to open up that opportunity there rather than saying actually academia university is the only path I think there's now, after the, for perhaps kind of commendable and sort of noble reasons, the new Labour government wanted to get to that 50 % target.

1:40:36Amol Rajan: I think there's, and I say this as someone who presents a show called University Challenge, I think there's a feeling that perhaps there are people going to university for whom it's not the best thing. And it's one thing to find that out for yourself when you get there, but if you go on false pretenses because you think it's going to get you a certain job or you don't really know how much debt you're going to get into, that's a different thing. It's worth saying, and I know you're not taking a strong position on it, I guess the question about those different paths is some people say, well, A, there are late developers.

1:41:04Amol Rajan: So if you do woodwork at 12 or 13, you may not know that your physics is your thing until you're a bit older. And the danger would be that you potentially end up with kind of a two-tier system where you get kids from poorer backgrounds who end up doing skills and vocational stuff and kids from richer backgrounds do a crunchy sort of traditional subject. But it sounds like, because I looked at your LinkedIn post, it sounds like in Holland they've overcome that. There isn't the same sort of class worries. They actually just end up with a lot of kids who are quite happy at school. They are, yeah.

1:41:33And I think you're right to raise those concerns. Again, this is the complexity of all of these decisions. And Melbourne will look into it. But I think the concept of championing skills-based careers as well as academic careers and academic success, because there are lots of kids that don't know what they want to do at 19, 20, 21. So some of them just go to university and do something. And I'm sure there's lots of other good outcomes of that socially and everything else. but in the old days you'd have gone and worked in a shop or worked in a bar and three years on a trade yeah and you start developing skills so you know i sense that we're heading towards a commitment to more apprenticeships going back to apprenticeships uh i sense that there's a desire you know i've sat with lots of chief execs of businesses that everybody's recognizing our big businesses in this country we've got to tell a different story here we we need to be on the right side of this um argument and we've got to offer more opportunities for young people i think i i am encouraged by that i have to say that what do you mean by big we've got to tell a different story about big business well that we've got to tell a different story for our young people so i think right what we saw in holland was local businesses felt an obligation to provide training to provide apprenticeships, to provide work.

1:43:05You know, I think I'm hearing the same thing from CEOs of big businesses in this country now. No, we've got to, we need to, whatever the number is, we need to commit to this number. And I can see a bit of momentum building around that.

1:43:19Amol Rajan: Well, let me tell you, now that I've left BBC News and I'm allowed to have opinions, one thing I feel very, very strongly about is that for young people, it's important to get out there and into the world of work. and not to think that you can be on your laptop at home or kind of phoning it in. If I think about when I started out my career in a newsroom, it was that human-to-human contact. It was that thing you didn't know you were going to see. It was that person that turned up in the office that you didn't know was going to be there. It was that meeting that you just walked into. I remember a news conference at The Independent.

1:43:50Amol Rajan: I didn't know if I was allowed in there because I was just a young Turk. And I went in there and said, yeah, come on in. Suddenly you're taking all this stuff in. It is important for young people to get in amongst it, isn't it? to not be working from home and to realise that actually if they're committed to growing and developing, they've got to get out of their bedrooms basically. Yeah, no question. I don't like the concept for young people of working from home. Why? Because of the missed opportunities to learn, social interaction,

1:44:23the example you just gave where you're learning from how somebody holds a difficult conversation with somebody or what their body language looked like or, you know, the phone call that you're over here that might teach you in a good or a bad, you know, well, I'm not going to hold a conversation like that. I heard how that was received by the person on the other end of the phone or there are all these, again, learning through osmosis of watching people, watching experienced people how they behave how they interact how businesses work um it can only be good for your development if you're at home you miss so much of that you can't do it on zoom or yeah great for me at 56 like i don't have to travel i save my so i i understand young kids

1:45:10Amol Rajan: you've been on maternity leave that's a different thing but when you're young if you're free of responsibilities i'm gonna say you know this feels good i'm allowed to say this if you're listening kids get out of your bedroom and get into work i couldn't have said that the last time we had a meeting but also what what we both know is kids want to work exactly and they love it you know there's a there's a perception that with a generation of kids that don't want to work and you know i know in that article i changed neats to leets didn't i because some youngsters said to us no we're not it's not that we're not in employment we're looking for employment for education and and i think that's important you know again we're labeling and we feel it It feels like we're labelling our young people.

1:45:52Some of this, we've got to change the language we use and be more optimistic about some of these things. And we've got to put things in place. We can't just have hope, but there's got to be strategies behind that.

1:46:04Amol Rajan: One of the main things about getting out, not working from home, if you're young, is that you meet people who can then be mentors to you. And I know even just talking to you today, Alan Smith or Terry Venables, or even those people who dropped you from Southampton when you were 13, in a weird sort of way they've sort of been guides to you and i don't know how much i'm allowed to say otherwise but one of the things you're looking at i know speaking to lots of institutions is really converting mentoring into a bigger part of our society a bigger part of our culture because one connection and it's no coincidence i've called this in my rajin connection one relationship can completely transform a life because one person who meets you and gives you a chance could get you off the column called welfare and into the column called work and that could change your life and the life of your family and indeed your community and that's why it's that human connection connection that human relationship that you need isn't it definitely I mean I think there's there's a guidance and a learning part to that but there's also just a networking aspect you know as I've stepped out of football where frankly as a player is a meritocracy so I didn't need to think about networking but as I've stepped out of that I've I realized my goodness you know because you're one call away so when you look at what makes a difference for kids in terms of opportunity a lot of that is their networks a lot of that is the ability to be able to get that um into you know just an interview or a little bit of work experience that then helps them develop skills for for their next job um and so the more people you can reach out to and build those networks I think that's incredibly valuable listen you've been so generous with your time and I've got some quick fire questions and lots of questions including one from Tim Davey for you for a Monday episode I just want to end with a couple of final very brief thoughts you're definitive and clear in this conversation that you wouldn't you can't really see why you would go into Premier League club management are you as clear about not going into politics oh yeah definitely that was a much bigger year why my goodness why don't you think i've had enough stress and misery in my life you're sort of doing politics by other means well you're right i guess it it but you wouldn't go into it you wouldn't be mayor of watford no no i mean look do i have crystal palace got a ring to it do i think um do i want to make a difference to society and make a positive difference to young people's lives for example absolutely do i want to be bogged down by all the you know firstly you've got to join a party i don't know what that who that would be i've got a similar problem so um no absolutely not but but but i but i think i can have an impact in a different way you know i think i can convene i think i can to a degree talk to young people I know I can convene business I know I can I have roots into politicians so I feel like because of the role I had and the profile I have my voice can make a difference and I can go and physically make a difference to certain things so I do like the idea of making a difference there championing young people inspiring young people helping maybe push some policy changes for young people but getting bogged down with in all the weeds of it no no thing you don't fancy a three line whip in parliament 10 o 'clock on a tuesday night saying where are you on the vote on pensions reform no okay i don't understand that so i've got a very clear sense of your future i always like to think about the future at the end i've got a very clear sense of your future when it comes to purpose and young people and so on um i've just set up a media company it sounds like you've set one too as well what's your what's your plans there yeah so initially um the specific area of football if we talk about football all the things we've talked about the off the field um myself and my business partner jimmy worrell who ran a company called leaders in sport for years and one of the things we felt about sports industry in particular some of the decisions that are made in the boardrooms haven't been articulated to the fans and so we felt we we knew um christian purslow who was chief exec at our ashton villa um at liverpool and was head of commercial at chelsea unique insight into those premier league shareholders meetings um unique insight into to working with foreign ownership, with the financial regulations in football.

1:50:48So we started with Christian and Henry Winter, who's obviously been Sports Journalist of the Year umpteen times.

1:50:56Amol Rajan: Amazing football writer, yeah. Yeah, we started a visual podcast called The Football Boardroom, which unpicked all of these things. And we've been amazed that actually the audience for that has grown hugely. Great show. and turns out if you get people that know what they're talking about talking about it yeah and we felt that you know it didn't you know not every media platform needs to be about noise and clicks and you know actually informing people and simplifying some of these complex terms that are going on has had real appeal so yeah so we've we've been delighted with that we've got two more football podcasts that are in in the pipeline that we're going to start we're very close to doing a deal with a significant media company to collaborate on those.

1:51:44And then we've got some other ideas. It's not my company, is it? Well, we have to work harder. You've been able to get funding very easily. We've got to work a lot harder than that. You've got an enormous reputation in this field. I've never been an England manager.

1:52:00Amol Rajan: Who knows? That could be ahead of me. So media is going to be an ever bigger part of your life. It's wonderful. Yeah, and I've enjoyed learning more about it. You know, I've enjoyed the process of, okay, I probably would have gone into sports journalism if I hadn't been a footballer. You know, that was the path I'd kind of got mapped out in the back of my mind. Well, because I thought you'd just get paid for going to all the best matches and writing about it. I thought that would be brilliant. That's literally why I became a journalist because it didn't work. I was not good enough as a cricket player.

1:52:33Amol Rajan: and I used to read the sports pages of the Times and all these cricket writers like Christopher Martin Jenkins, Alan Lee, who then covered Michael Henderson, these great, great, great writers. And I just thought, well, I might as well become a journalist. At least that way I'd get to go to the cricket. Well, that was my idea. And look, we know this landscape is changing. You've left the BBC. YouTube is now one of the places, the social media format. So, yeah, we're intrigued by that world. We've got some ideas of some other shows we'd like to produce. It's a very crowded space, so we think we've got to provide something that isn't currently there, informative or insightful, but also fun and entertaining.

1:53:22So, yeah, and we're going to follow your journey very, very closely because we know you're going to smash it.

1:53:27Amol Rajan: Oh, Gareth. It honestly means the world to me to have you as a first guest here. Thank you so much. I'm so, so grateful. Listen, we've had a bunch of questions in, including from your mate Tim Davey and others who are going to give you a little bit of needle. But I'm going to end with a bit of the little fun quickfire questions. These can be maximum 10 words, minimum one. And this is just a bit of fun. Who's been the biggest influence on your life? Parents, mom and dad. Which team do you support? yeah well yeah i mean when i was a kid manchester united now palace villa well like i had between six and eight years at all three clubs so i've got such a strong affinity and i did leave villa under a cloud so i'm not always welcome hugely welcome when i go back there it's all right i I forgave you as a fan.

1:54:20Amol Rajan: Best moment of your career?

1:54:26I would say getting, well, my first England cap because it was a lifetime's achievement. And then, yeah, beating Denmark at Wembley, getting us to the first final for 60 years. Worst moment? Well, blimey, there's a lot of... there are many

1:54:54I mean I could say the penalty but then we've already explained that there's so many amazing things that came from that so I don't actually look back on a worse moment there's games that I wish had gone in a different way I wish I was sitting here as a European champion as player and coach I wish I was a world champion wish I hadn't been relegated at Palace wish there were cup finals that we could have won that we didn't when I was playing but I don't look at any of that as worst moments I've been left

1:55:28Amol Rajan: Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo? Messi Why? Because I just think the ability to dribble past people and take people out of the game one-on-one which I think Messi has and Ronaldo is a slightly different type of player. I think that's the most beautiful thing to watch on a football pitch and I think it's the most difficult thing to do. By the way, they're both amazing. How can you say that after that cross in the semi-final with his right foot? My goodness. How much time do you spend in the gym each week? Yeah, probably between three to five hours. What time do you wake up in the morning? Anything between four and six o 'clock.

1:56:12Four? Yeah, I have some bad sleep patterns at times. Yeah, that's a weakness for me.

1:56:18Amol Rajan: You've got to put your phone away. Well, yeah, I do that bit. I can get to sleep no problem. I'm in a bit of a cycle at the moment of 4 o 'clock. It feels like the new 7 or 6 or whatever. But I make sure I get enough sleep with little naps or whatever. Can I tell you something? I've just been on this show called The Celebrity Traitors and I hadn't slept for a decade. When I was up there, you lose your phone and you're in a very dark hotel room and it turns out if you don't have your phone and you're in a dark room, you sleep for eight hours. That's the first time in a decade, so I recommend it.

1:56:54Amol Rajan: Three last questions. When did you last cry?

1:57:00Look, I am a bit of a weeper. If there's a film or there's a documentary on with a sad story, the rest of the family kind of look at G, he's off again. so I do get quite emotionally drawn into things that's a good thing how do you win the future?

1:57:18Amol Rajan: advice for a young person

1:57:27you can look at everything that society is going to provide for you and offer you and you can complain about that and we've got to do more for you but you've also you're the only one that can make the decisions so ultimately you've got to take responsibility you've got one chance at this we get one life venables used to say it ain't a rehearsal and he was so right you know if you if you're thinking about the decision you just took i'm going to go for it i'm going to leave something that i've been brilliant at but and there's a comfort around it but I'm going to back myself and I'm going to go and see what I can achieve I love that and I think that's where we have to remind young people we can complain about stuff but ultimately we have to put the effort in we have to be there on time we have to give ourselves the best chance to succeed I love that be a winner not a winner

1:58:23Amol Rajan: last last question if you could go back and relive just one moment in your life when would it be

1:58:33Hmm

1:58:40Well, I mean, I've been blessed. I feel like I've had a life in football that was the one thing I wanted to do when I was five, six, seven years old. So I've had so many great moments. I've met so many great people.

1:59:01Amol Rajan: You meant to say a wedding day, for goodness sake. yeah yeah that's a great point yeah yeah and I had two kids so I couldn't have gone with one or the other no no you had to choose one or the other Alison will kill me I'm going to call you sir to finish with so Gareth Southgate it's been such a pleasure and a privilege thank you so much I've loved it thank you for having me thank you so so so much cheers wow what an extraordinary conversation and what an extraordinary guy look one of the things about the Amol Rajan connection is I want to learn alongside you and I want to learn out loud and in public so here are three lessons from my conversation with gareth southgate number one we are not defined by our failures in our 20s he started again in his mid 50s and frankly i find that inspirational number two nice guys don't always come last that's a silly stereotype he is a kind empathetic really nice guy and he is a winner number three there is more to masculinity than toxic masculinity the issues that we're talking about is a crisis of meaning amongst a whole generation of boys and young men i'm going to talk a lot about those issues on this show, including quite possibly on Monday's question and answer episode.

2:00:04Amol Rajan: Thank you if you've sent a question in. And before we go, I do just want to say a very big and very sincere thank you to our launch partners, because they make all of this possible. So thank you to Amazon. Thank you to Google Cloud. Thank you to NatWest. And thank you to Waitrose. We simply wouldn't be here without them. Thank you for your time. And I'll see you Monday.