Q&A with Gareth Southgate: Egos, young athletes and mental health

0:00Amol Rajan: I thought he was talking about you. Oh, here we go. There you go. Guys, have I got an ego? Hello and welcome to the first question and answer episode of the Amol Rajan Connection. So we are going to do these episodes every Monday and they're basically a chance for you to put your questions to these super smart, super interesting and influential guests that we invite into this wonderful studio. It's basically our invitation to you to really connect with our guests. Just before we get into your questions, I do want to say a really sincere, really heartfelt thanks to our launch partners because they make this possible.

0:35Amol Rajan: So thank you to Amazon. Thank you to Google Cloud. Thank you to NatWest and thank you to Waitrose. We simply could not do this without them. Right. Here's your first question.

0:52Amol Rajan: Okay, so Gareth, this first question is from a friend of mine, a friend of yours. It was often said that the worst job in England was being England manager, and the second worst job in England wasn't being Prime Minister, which had certain perks, but being Director General of the BBC. And I can say, because he's a mate of mine, that Tim Davey probably had the toughest run of any director general. There were a few headlines he had to deal with. And personally, I think he did a fantastic job. But he said in a voice note, have a little listen to this. This is from Tim Davey. OK. Hello, Gareth. Tim Davey here.

1:27When I was running the BBC, I had to deal with a lot of so-called talent who had public profiles, their own fan bases and big reputations. How did you deal with players who were huge characters with a healthy dash of ego and a rebellious spirit?

1:48Amol Rajan: Ooh. Can I just, is there a bit of needle? Because I don't know your history. You see a lot of Tim. I don't know if there's a bit of history there. Is he referring to something specific there or is he just talking in general terms, you think? It's not some particular story that he's trying to get out of. I thought he was talking about you. Oh, here we go. No, no, no. Huge characters, slightly rebellious, dash of ego. Elizabeth, have I got an ego? I don't think I've got any ego. I'm not the Jack Grealish of the dressing room. How did you deal with players who are tricky customers? Dash of ego. What makes a brilliant team?

2:22You need different personalities, different qualities. So, like I'm a steady Eddie, 7 out of 10. You know what you're going to get, but that won't be enough to win you leagues. and so you need the creative nine out of ten guys that can deliver something exceptional in any business. They might be the best salesperson, they might be the best broadcaster, they might be the left winger in the team, whatever that might be. You need these different people and you've got to take the time to understand them and what motivates them and especially not restrict them. so I always talk about you want certain guidelines as a team but you can't treat everybody in the same way and you have to accept that some people are going to push those barriers they'll be slightly late they'll be and they kind of the rest of the team look at you to say okay how are you going to deal with this because you're expecting us all to be on time and but you've got to have a basic outline framework like that but within that have the scope for these characters to be able to be themselves to have their individuality to explore their creativity because if you are too strict and you have too many rules and you've got to conform to this then you're going to lose all the things they're brilliant at and you're going to you're going to miss so much as a team and then you've also got to work with the rest of the team so that they understand we're better if we've got this player who's a bit more of a maverick a little bit left field think slightly differently now actually we were lucky we didn't have like our best players they were pretty easy to manage I have to say you know we yes we had big egos they're all big egos That's why they are professional footballers.

4:23But, I mean, you mentioned that Jack. Jack's a great creative character, but the whole group love him. You know, he's a likable personality. So we definitely had boys that challenged. And, you know, sometimes I think some of them, they know their own value and they challenge you as a manager. And you can get drawn to think, okay, is he doing this on purpose or is he just stretching the boundaries? But yeah, I think recognising that it's not one size fits all. It's not about treating everybody exactly the same way.

4:57Amol Rajan: Do you have a mode where you're a ferocious disciplinarian as well? I remember I had a teacher at school called Miss Gray, who's the nicest teacher in the world, but she said if necessary, she could do a bad witch impression. She could become terrifying. And she was acting. I saw her later. It was an act. But if someone, if any player got things wrong, Is there a kind of mode that you can go into where you're like different to the Gareth that I'm chatting to today? Yeah, yeah, definitely. And actually, that didn't display itself because of a mistake, but it might have displayed itself as a lack of effort or ill-discipline.

5:38Because I think you can challenge those things. I think generally I'm a little bit quieter and more thoughtful. is probably more impactful when I lose my rag because people go, blimey, this must be really bad. Yeah, exactly.

5:51Amol Rajan: It must be mega serious now. Okay, we've got another question. Thank you, Tim, for that. I'm glad you're enjoying life after the BBC. You certainly looked about 20 years younger when I saw you last. We've got another question which has come in as a voice note from Sophie Pender. I should just quickly explain that Sophie Pender, who I know pretty well, is the founder of something called the 93 % Club. It basically tries to create a kind of network, an alumni network for people who've gone to state schools to create the kind of connections by which they can sort of go through the world of work and succeed in life.

6:24Amol Rajan: This is from Sophie Pender. Brilliant. It's Sophie Pender from the 93 % Club. My question is about how we bring this country together. I see the best of people during times of football, whether it's the World Cup or the Euros. I think football has an amazing ability to bring this country together. But we need to be realistic about the fact that this country can still feel so divided by class. How do you think we as a country can make sure that the children of the most working class people in our society grow up alongside those from the wealthiest parts of society? How do we make sure that this country doesn't get torn apart by class divisions?

7:08Is there something in sport or is there something more that we could be doing?

7:12Amol Rajan: It's true to say that a lot of the young men that you've nurtured and mentored over many, many years did come from families that didn't have a huge amount growing up. That actually creates quite a lot of challenges if they suddenly come into some money. There's quite a lot of kind of financial literacy and working out what to do with all this. But basically, how can football be used to unite the country and overcome divisions? whether class or indeed other divisions? Yeah, I mean, it's a brilliant question. I'm not sure I'm intelligent enough to come up with a solution. What strikes me about what Sophie said is absolutely, you know, I was involved in a meritocracy for 20 years in terms of playing and similarly as a coach, you know, I was only picking people who didn't matter what their heritage, what their religion it's just in a football dressing room can you play do you fit in with the team boom finished so you do start to notice when you step out of that world yeah and class is obviously uh has been a big barrier to opportunity to things like networks that we talked about previously that are so important towards finding employment um hard to have a solution i just recognize that what we've got to give is hope to kids in those parts of the country where there is less opportunity that they can achieve things because one of the biggest things if not the biggest things that holds kids back in life is that they don't they don't know what's possible but also do they have the mindset to achieve it it's a hard thing to say to young people having a tough time but for people who go back and listen to our main episode which was out last Thursday.

8:58Amol Rajan: They'll hear your answer when I asked you how do you win the future was about giving people this sense of agency that actually their future is in their own hands. As Terry Venable said to you, it's not a rehearsal. And saying to people you've got to have the right attitude to succeed isn't a way of saying, you know, we're ignoring the fact that you've got difficult circumstances. That's not what it's about. It's just saying have the mindset of going out to achieve. It's worth saying, I'd say, if I may, that one of your answers to Sophie is the Dear England letter. Because in Dear England, you basically made the case that football was about more than football and that it could overcome division.

9:29Amol Rajan: So I'm sure Sophie's read it, but I'd recommend she reads it again. Sophie, thank you for sending us that. We had loads of questions from people who are basically obsessed with sport and obsessed with fitness. So we're going to have a couple of those quickly now, if we may. This is a video message from Ben. Hi, Gareth. It's Ben. I'm a strength and conditioning coach to youth athletes. And I was wondering what advice you would give them when they're looking to chase their dreams in sport, but manage their education and their social life and all of the kind of hectic things that happen in child and adolescence, what advice you would give them and how to achieve that dream whilst juggling all of the pressure that they're exposed to.

10:05Thank you.

10:07Amol Rajan: Very interesting, Ben. Thank you so much for sending in that question. Advice for young athletes going through adolescence, what advice for juggling all the pressures that they are exposed to? I mean, there is a difficult question here, which is that if you put all your eggs in one basket and you go for it with sport and it doesn't work out, that could be pretty bad. But in terms of, and you've got two children as well, you've got a son and a daughter, in terms of dealing with modern adolescence, what advice have you got for young athletes? Yeah, I mean, I think when you have a dream and I've got some friends whose kids wanted to be in drama, go to drama school and they were kind of, oh, I don't know, you know, such a difficult world, there's so few parts and what's the future I think if you've got that sort of a dream and it's possible to take the next step then you've got to go for it you know so I think people will always put barriers in your way that oh you know have you thought about that you know my my mum would have said to me career in football you could get injured tomorrow you know she wanted me to stay and take A-levels.

11:16And, you know, thankfully we agreed that, no, look, if I don't go for it now, you know, there's no second chance to do this. It'll be too late in two years' time. And so I would always encourage kids to, if they've got an opportunity, they've got a dream, they want to go for it, go for it. Equally, it always worries me in our academies, for example, where all the focus is on just the footballer. We take probably, we've got 92 clubs, nearly all of them take around 10 kids a year into their system. And you've probably got maybe 20 at some clubs. So you've got 20 under eights, under nines, under tens, under elevens.

12:03So the dropout rate is going to be enormous. Now, what none of those kids want to hear is, you might not make it because that doesn't resonate. But I think if we framed that slightly differently and said, if you're going to have a career in sport, then at some point it's going to finish and you're going to need a second career and maybe a third. so but but i think that frames the thought process a little bit more because you should be and i think some of our athletes now are recognizing this you know they're they're creating their own media channels or they're thinking about what might come they're investing in businesses they're a lot more forward thinking than our generation were they've got a bit more money to go and do it by the way but but i think you know for youngsters they still need that balance you know if you're a parent who's got to drive your little one around to tennis lessons or gym lessons whatever it might be first of all remember they're a kid they're growing up you know their personal development they're not just an athlete they're not just a kid that might make a load of money for the family if they're playing football they are a human being that's still developing with all the issues that young men and young women have.

13:28And let's think about their holistic development, not just their sporting development. I love it. You know, I played cricket, rugby, did cross country, played football, hit the ball around. By doing all those different sports, I developed different muscles, different movement patterns, different hand-eye coordination. like I don't like it when we specialise too young in one sport. Now I know if you want to be an elite tennis player you've got to probably play from seven, eight years old and get the hours in but you can also do other things physically and you can mix things up because I think otherwise you're just, I think kids could get bored.

14:15Amol Rajan: Yeah, yeah. If you do want to make it, there is this other aspect to it, isn't there? which is you do need to have a kind of singular focus. You know, there is a kind of, and that might cost you, you know, but there is a kind of, you know, I always remember reading Alex Ferguson's autobiography and he said that Beckham, basically the thing about Beckham, which everyone knew is married to a pop star, famous, good-looking guy, Real Madrid, this, that and the other. After training, he hung a tyre from that goal and he took 30 free kicks and until he got a certain amount in through the tyre, he didn't go home.

14:47Amol Rajan: and it's that thing about it's been perspiration versus inspiration if you do want to make it elite level you do need to focus don't you you do i mean you're absolutely right to make that point a life as a sports man or sportswoman can actually be quite dull you know you're on the road it's repetitive it's train eat sleep physio massage maybe you know swim sauna recover go again it's pretty relentless for a brief period of time but if you're a youngster that can get quite you know I you know I can't go out with my mates I can't go sightseeing I can't go walking I can't so actually to have other stimulations whether that's reading or you know studying something or having another interest I think it's healthy because yes you've got to be focused but also there needs to be an escape because the pressure of it all can get too much so you know some of the guys like to go and play a little bit of golf or they they dj a little bit or whatever they might do i think it's important to encourage that escape how do you relax well i've got family i take the dog for a walk i do go to the gym or i i've now started playing golf again but i do like getting into you know the drama series i love slow horses things like that so yeah i watch slow horses everyone's exactly yeah gary oldman brilliant yeah i mean i remember him very early on playing a football hooligan in a um in a sort of drama i mean he'd have been right at the beginning i think it was called the football factory or something like that oh yes um so So I do enjoy those things, because for the last 10 years, every night I had to watch a game.

16:41I was either at a match or at home thinking, right, Villa are on Europa League tonight, I need to find what channel it's on and I need to watch this game because there's a player playing and I need to be across all of it. So there was hardly ever an evening off, whereas now I've enjoyed that, oh, I don't have to go to a game on a Saturday. I might go and play golf, actually. I'm going to go around to a friend's house. I can go to the pub and have a pint. Nobody's going to take a picture of me because it doesn't really matter. So there's all those things. But when you're a young sports person, you're right.

17:17You have got to commit.

17:18Amol Rajan: Right, two more questions because you've been so ridiculously generous with your time. So John is a personal trainer in South London and he sent us this. Thank you, John. Hi, I'm John. Question for Gareth. the morning after resigning from the England manager's job. Was it a feeling of regret of what could have been or a sense of relief that you didn't have to deal with a job anymore? Thank you. Well, both is the honest answer. My last game was obviously the final against Spain. So we're level at 87 minutes or I think they got the winner. and we had a chance cleared off the line in the 92nd. So we were in that game right till the very death of it.

18:05So the sense of disappointment, of course, when you're that close and for eight years you've built to try to win, that would have been a brilliant way to say, what a great way to go out and deliver what everybody's been waiting for. so there's always going to be that element of a wish there'd been those couple of wins that would have made the difference and brought the trophy home and then you know not immediately after I left the role but probably a couple of weeks after suddenly realized the weight that was gone and it's hard to explain what that was but I think we kind of touched on it it's just the I don't have to be in that office I don't have to be watching that game I can go and play golf because people aren't going to say why are you playing golf you should be at the match I've not got somebody asking me why I haven't picked this player I'm not in the headlines I'm not in a press conference so there are all these things that and just everywhere you go although people of course recognize me and come up and say hello but when you you know you're the england manager you're you're carrying that there's a i'm not saying i go misbehave myself grossly now but but yeah but but you know if i stumbled out of a restaurant now people go look at that idiot whereas i'd have been

19:29Amol Rajan: on the front pages of the paper i've made a real point in this and in the long episode on thursday which people should go back and listen to i've made a real point of i didn't want to ask you about what you think about thomas tuchel and you know substitutions and england this that and the other but so putting the tactics aside psychologically was it a weird experience watching England go out against Argentina obviously the disappointment that you know defeat in the last stages but did you almost go into autopilot afterwards thinking who I do do I need to call who do I need to console what the conversations I need to have and then you realize actually it's all right I'm not the manager anymore yeah well I mean with the team I'd said from the start that it's not helpful if you've been in an organisation to be commenting on them.

20:13So I knew, and that's quite difficult because there's obviously brilliant staff that I work with as well as players for years, but I don't want to put them in the position where I'm phoning them up and they think, oh, he wants to find out, you know, what's Thomas like? Is it as good as when I was? So I've purposely kept out of the way of all of that. It was fascinating to watch the World Cup from the outside. Not, even not so much the, you know, necessarily the games and the performances, but just, God, yeah, I remember what that was like. You know, that moment where you are knocked out and then the press conferences and the line of questioning and the, you know, the sort of jamboree that goes around the tournament to watch it and observe it from the outside was fascinating because you kind of knew every step along the way what was coming yeah and like a chessboard yeah and so it's also it's kind of reassuring because you think actually it wasn't just aimed at me that is the role that's where it heads they are the questions you're asked they are the dynamics of it watching that from the outside was kind of oh yeah i remember all of that and now i don't miss any of it when i say i don't miss the England job they're the bits that you that you don't miss because you're in the most incredible spotlight and that's a hard place to be and to carry yourself with dignity and to try to

21:44Amol Rajan: you know give logical answers I speak to a lot of ex-politicians and they always say the two best things about being an ex-politician other than the things you're talking about is a not having to be nice to people which I always say is so nice someone parks in your driveway you can say hey shove off which you can't do that if you're their mp and then they all say it's just such a relief not having to have an opinion on everything like you know I was thinking with you you know if you're an England football manager someone would say hydration breaks Gareth what do you think about that you think oh god what do I think about it and then what can I think about it and what's that yeah um anyway hydration breaks what do you well you're right because you know now I'm not I'm not going to bump into somebody from FIFA tomorrow or but at the FA you're thinking right I'm the England manager so there's a consequence of our relationship with FIFA if we start questioning that and then there's a sponsorship element to the hydration break so there's all these connections that do make some of those decisions more complicated.

22:44Amol Rajan: Now you can just think it this is my thought rather than the final question from Ed I've got to ask as a fan what you made of the scenes after the final. Because honestly, watching the Argentina team, I didn't want my kids to watch it. I just thought this is not what football was meant to be like. I thought it was such a strange escalation. I mean, obviously there's history between those two nations, but there was something about that much aggro on football's biggest stage that felt a bit like you were saying on Thursday's episode. It felt like it wasn't football. Was that Freudian slip? It was that.

23:22It was that, it was that, sorry.

23:26Amol Rajan: It wasn't football showing its best side, I think you could say, about the scenes after that final whistle. Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, there's, we played, even at junior level, we played a lot of South American teams, and there's a passion and a rawness in the way they go about their football that can overspill at times within games, after games. And it's very easy to sit when you're not involved in it and say, why are they behaving that way? And yet, I would always be saying, well, there's no way I'd behave in that way. You've got to respect the game and you've got to accept losing and winning in the same manner.

24:13but it's easy to say that when you're not emotionally attached to it so I actually I have to also say I was in New York at the time of the final at an event but I ended up having to watch it at the airport on a screen that was about 30 yards from where I was sat so it was very hard to make out any of what was happening so yeah what you're telling me I saw one or two clips of it And of course, there's been heavy suspensions. And so there's been a decision made on their behaviours in that way. I think the punishment's probably been correct.

24:50Amol Rajan: So this is a final question, Gareth. This is from the magnificent Ed, who I happen to know. He's a friend of this show. He's from London. And he is one of many people who is, I think, profoundly interested in the work that you do with young men. Absolutely young men who are kind of lost souls. Let's hear this question from Ed. Hi Gareth, my name's Ed. My first question is about mental health and you've talked a lot about mental health amongst men and boys. I'm interested to know what can men do if they spot a friend, a colleague or maybe someone in their football team who they think is suffering from loneliness, isolation or just needs some more support?

25:32Amol Rajan: Ed, that is a fantastic question. And it's worth saying loneliness is, and this is a hopeful note on which to end, because it's actually about helping people, which is something you're trying to do a lot of, Gareth. Loneliness and extreme isolation, particularly for a small segment of the population, is a massive issue. It's a growing issue. We used to think of isolation or loneliness as something that affects old people. Now it mostly affects young people. and we also know that a lot of people became much more lonely during the pandemic and actually they never managed to sort of reintegrate into society.

26:03Amol Rajan: So Ed's question is if you spot a friend or someone in your football team who you think is suffering or needs more support, what kind of advice would you say? What's a good intervention to make? Well, let's talk. In the most simple of possible terms, that is fundamentally part of friendship. um I mean I think it's also important to say that you know when I was when I was a younger player person I like things mentally I like I thought I was the only one that was nervous before a game and I thought I was the only one that went over and over and over the mistakes that had happened in the game after the game and I might have thought I was going into a room of people didn't know how it would play out and I was the only one that was anxious about going into that room and what life and experience has taught me is that all of that's completely normal and is what pretty much everybody goes through so sometimes I think the context that actually our brains work in a way that we doubt ourselves we question ourselves sadly we have more negative thoughts than positive thoughts and you know i've worked with a lot of psychologists over the years with the team that explained this to me like steve peters yes brilliant i loved his book because it just simplified for me right okay i can i get that you know when somebody smacks me around i don't know why reacting angrily now because the chimp part of the brain reacts and then the the rest of it kind of puts things in the computer puts it into place so so there's there's recognizing that actually um our brain takes us takes us to a negative place quite often and it that's a normal process so don't don't be down on yourself a lot of people experience that most people are anxious about things anxiety is or nervousness is quite normal you know I hear I hear sometimes language like I'm overwhelmed or you know that's that that's quite can be quite a serious step further and so let's make sure we're very careful about how we use that sort of language because nervousness anxiety feeling a bit of stress is normal for most people work does that to us family life does that to us life does that to us yeah if you're equally if you've if you're seeing somebody who their behavior or their the way they're carrying themselves is changed you know you know them well but you're recognizing a change this was one of the things i didn't really fully appreciate about football environment but you've always got people looking out for you like it's not just coaches but physio the kit man the masseur like very often they'd somebody would come to me within that group of staff and say just know this player x and it's not quite right don't know what's going on at home or i've heard them and so it's an amazing support system that they have you know my son plays in a cricket you know local cricket team the best part about that of course they want to win but the best part is the camaraderie is the togetherness it is saying are you okay mate you know I just noticed you're not you're not yourself and just those little check-ins and you might have to ask a couple of times because very often the first response is yeah absolutely fine and I think the second time you ask people start to open up a little bit more so I do think those conversations are important and I do think that I think we're in a better place now where men are more prepared to talk about those things you know our my dad's generation were far more stoic I think they'd have felt that was a weakness to talk about emotions and whereas I think it's good for our kids that I think it's seen as more acceptable we should offload those things So I just did an event with Stephen Graham the actor who's just done this book Letters to Our Sons It looks brilliant Absolutely amazing book and I tell you what it's just basically a bunch of fathers some famous, some not so famous writing to their sons and yeah I can't recommend it enough Gareth it's been such a pleasure Do you know I should how have we done this is the first time we've done this has it been alright has this experience worked out for you Look, I've loved it.

30:40I mean, to be honest, it's just been nice to sit and have a chat with you. Thank you. By the way, I won't watch the finished article because I'll hate looking at myself. Oh, come on. So I'll watch your second episode. I'll watch your second episode. I'm not sure what you're going to do.

30:54Amol Rajan: But thank you so much for being our first guest. As it's the first time we're doing this, we are trying to start a few traditions. And you may have noticed I'm vaguely in love with the colour orange. and we're going to start. You're the first recipient of the Amol Rajan Connection or should I say ARC photo. I don't know why Gareth Southgate would want a photo of me and him. No, I love that. But I'm going to give it to you in a lovely orange frame and say thank you so much for being our guest. We've loved it. And we're going to get you signed the guest book. But I just wanted to say thank you for your time and hope we can meet again in the future.

31:26Thank you very much.

31:27Amol Rajan: Cheers, mate. That's fantastic. Thank you so much. Love it. Wow. Thank you so much to Sir Gareth Southgate. What an extraordinary man he is. And by the way, if you haven't enjoyed Thursday's episode yet, you must go back because it is an absolute cracker. And if you want to send in your questions for future guests, please do so by going to amolrajanconnection.com and joining our club. It's a free weekly newsletter. And yeah, it's very easy to send us questions. By the way, before we go, I just want to say a huge heartfelt thank you to our launch partners. They make this possible. So thank you to Amazon.

31:59Amol Rajan: Thank you to Google Cloud. Thank you to NatWest and thank you to Waitrose. Without them, well, we simply wouldn't be here. Thank you as well for your time. We're back with another fantastic guest on Thursday. I shall see you then. Please follow or subscribe for free to make sure you get each new weekly episode of the Amol Rajan Connection.