Gareth Southgate | The Football Boardroom

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1:02Welcome to the Football Boardroom. I'm Christian Perslow. And I'm Henry Winter. And today we have our first ever guest. He needs no introduction. Gareth Southgate, welcome to the Football Boardroom. Delighted to be here. I'm enjoying your work. Thank you. Well, it's a bit awkward because I don't know whether to call you Gareth or Gaffer, because for our audience's benefit, isn't it uncomfortable, Henry, that our boss is here. we are working on this podcast, which is produced by Gareth's media company, 1071. Which was your legacy number? It is. Yeah, it was my England legacy number. So you're going to go easy on us today?

1:39Well, look, the idea of the pod is we delve into areas that we don't think the fans have been given the detail behind. And I think you've done that brilliantly on the episode so far. I don't know where you're going to go with this one, but let's see. Well, that's a very good segue because I want to take you back to a restaurant in a hotel in Portugal. It's Easter 2024. And my great friend and your business partner, Jimmy, had asked me to come and have a coffee with you and him. And I sat down and what you told me was one of the biggest surprises of my life. Do you remember that? I do. Yeah, I do.

2:19So, I mean, basically, I'd been wrestling with what would my next step be. That's right. Seven years, seven and a half years into being the England manager. I'd been offered a new contract the November before, which made complete sense from an FA perspective. They wanted continuity. They wanted that to go through. they didn't want to be hostage to fortune on one bad night in the Euros, one penalty shootout, one red card, changing their direction of travel. But I had sensed around that period there was a growing disaffection within part of the fan base on how I was doing the job. And so I didn't think it was right to sign a contract pre-Euros.

3:16which would have been to take in America yeah to 26 then I'd pretty much made my mind up that it was going to be the right time to leave because if we went out early in the tournament it would be the right thing to do to go because expectations were to go we'd built expectations to go deep into the tournament and if we won it it was probably a good place to go out. I knew that if I signed a new contract before the tournament, that would potentially ramp the pressure up on everything. I'd seen that with Fabio when he signed pre-South Africa 2010. But what was interesting, because when we talked to you at the time, A, there was no suggestion that you were thinking this way.

4:05So, you know, the fact that you've got a tight-knit, close circle around you of people you trust and nothing leaked. But you always said to us at the time, the press, is that you would only change if you felt there was a change of mood amongst the players, not the fans. I mean, the fans will come back onside with a great goal, a great run. But the players were always supportive of you. Yeah, I never had any suggestion. You know, the old lose the dressing room if you ever actually have it. Never felt that in my time with England at any point. So this wasn't about where the playing squad is at, which you know as a manager if you...

4:43No, but that's the decision to call it a day. But coming back to our meeting, it's absolutely the impact on the dressing room of an early announcement. Yeah. That was definitely weighing heavily on your mind. And we've seen in the last couple of weeks, just with events at your old club, Palace. Yeah. You know, it really does feel to me, looking in from the outside, that, you know, Glasner's maybe well-intentioned clarification of his future position has had a very, very negative impact on that football team. Do you agree?

5:16Gareth Southgate:And was that the issue? The reality of that is I've seen that when you make a decision like that and you announce it, you lose power. You've talked in all these episodes, money, politics, power. As a head coach, I'm not a power crazy guy, but you need power over certain things. And once you announce that you're leaving, if I'd done that pre-tournament, I know there's an element of people in the FA would have had to start looking for a replacement there's people in different departments start to just operate differently the players know that you're going so you lose that authority and I would say looking at Palace from the outside soon as Oliver's made that decision you know you could say well he's giving the club plenty of time to but he's now lost that power because if I was Steve Parrish with Mark Gurhey in January, for example.

6:11Yeah, very good point. I've kept him in the summer transfer window, but now we lose£25 million if we don't sell him. If Oliver's staying, maybe we're thinking, well, we're pushing for Europe, and Palace actually had a dip. They're now probably out of those European places. We know the manager's going. It's a£25 million call. oh, we can't afford not to take that money. Whereas in the summer, he'd actually supported Oliver. We can't find a replacement. We carry on. And I think that announcement that Oliver made... So that sort of power with the owners to influence signings. And of course, now they're on a bad run.

6:53The supporters are wrapped up in all of that as well. I always felt that to announce I was going might have eased a bit of pressure on me because I think people would say, well, we don't need to worry about if he's going anyway, so let's just get behind the team. So that would have been a more comfortable few weeks for me in Germany, for sure. Was it a difficult decision for you? Because we know you're a very patriotic individual. That comes through in your family, that comes through in the training camps when you took the players down to the Marines. We see that during the national anthem. This is not simply a professional decision you're making.

7:26This must have cut right to your very core. Yeah. I joined the FA to help English football. in two or three different roles. Development of young English players, development of English coaches. So I didn't join to become senior manager. I joined to take the under-21s and help to show people what English young players were capable of. So my feeling as a manager has always been Wenger's quote, you manage as if you're going to be there forever in the knowledge that you can go tomorrow or in about an hour. if you don't sharpen up CP. So that is how it works, you know? And now, clearly, managers' life cycle is so short-term now that you see a lot more examples of people looking after themselves, if you like.

8:22And I can kind of understand it, but ultimately that's not good for football clubs. You need stability, don't you? You need to be able to plan constant change. Yeah, it's not just football clubs. Let's go back to that moment. I don't want this to be lost on our audience that, you know, you were the inevitable consequence of strapping up for those last three months, hopefully going deep into the tournament, was telling your representatives, I'm sticking with England. How many people knew? A handful. My point, Henry, is that that was a conscious decision to rule yourself out of very big club jobs that would be determined earlier that summer in all likelihood.

9:06And so actions speak louder than words. Your actions were to rule that out. How do you think about Manchester United? Well, you're always, it's an enormous club, isn't it? Well, it's also in your book. Yeah, I was a United fan. I didn't know that. From Crawley. Was it Brian Watson? No, but we lived in Bury when I was a kid. Well, did you? So, yeah, so, you know, I grew up 76 FA Cup when they lost to Southampton. I didn't know that. I knew that we had that weird bomb that you and my mum went to the same school in Crawley. It's us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, so, look, you know when you're the England manager, you can't be negotiating with clubs.

9:45You just can't do that, in my opinion. You've got Lopetegui. Yeah, with Spain. With Madrid and Spain. Yeah, yeah. So, that was a non-starter in my head. So I knew everything reputationally rested on the tournament in Germany. And I was comfortable with that. We'd had an amazing run of six years, seven years before that tournament. Ultimately, expectations had changed. Getting to a semi-final would be viewed as failure because we'd been to finals before. That's just the cycle that we'd raised those expectations. we couldn't talk any more about potential and coming back with the nation being proud.

10:31We had to talk about winning. I don't actually think that's a great place for England. I don't think as a nation we deal well with that sort of intensity of expectation and pressure. But I think we had to talk about it at that moment. And I had to accept that as manager. What I would say is there's no sport like football for the dissection and the spotlight, the heat of the spotlight. You know, England rugby have lost their last two matches having won 12. And I know Steve Borthwick well. He's been doing a brilliant job. If that was a football team, the level of emotional outpouring would be, you know, next level.

11:11You know, I've read some critical articles, but generally pretty balanced. We're still building towards a World Cup in two years' time. Football's just completely different to that, as we know. Fans, media, the whole thing. And England is, you know, the intensity of that spotlight. I was aware of it because I'd seen it. I'd lived through the Graham Taylor documentary. I'd lived through what Bobby Robson went through in his period. I'd been in there as a player. so you know, you understand the environment. And I was under no illusions. That's why I was never sure whether I wanted to take the job in the first place.

11:49But that's what you live through in that role. But just everyone talks about the impossible job, but is it also the loneliest job? Well, I think leadership generally is a lonely job. I mean, you'll have had this. Who can you really talk to? So we had that discussion because it was a really small trusted group of people. But you've got to make decisions about other people all the time that affect people's lives. Even within the FA, all my other staff, Monday to Friday, 45 weeks of the year, had other responsibilities that they were dealing with. There was only Steve Holland and myself travelling to matches, phoning each other at midnight on the way home from the games.

12:31We're seeing all the issues that we're building with players being out of form or out of fitness. the rest of the world just will come to that for a week in March and then everybody will be saying thank God back to the Champions League Apart from the CEOs bending your ear every time you come to the game to pick their players Correct we should go into that as well but ultimately England international football is an amazing beast because nobody really cares about it for 11 months of the year and then the World Cup comes and everybody expects perfection And that's the gig. I'm not complaining about that in any way, but that's the reality.

13:11Nobody is looking or thinking about those things until those games come up. Let's scroll forward to that tournament then. In that lunch, we coined a phrase about the risks of running through that tournament with your future known by about three people. And the risk was that if it went really wrong, I mean, the risk of those four tournaments, by far the most successful tournament record of any manager for my lifetime. We're in our 60s. We both have the same first football memory. It's 1970. We've seen brilliant managers reputationally bomb. You normalised going deep into the tournament, going to finals, as you say, raising expectation, and you changed the culture.

13:55That's what I think as a football fan. But you're sitting there now with this secret that it's your last hurrah. And if you go out early doors, you're going to get pelters. Your career with England will be, my word, concertinaed into the one minute of a penalty shootout that you lose in the last 16. I think it would have been for 48 hours and then there would have been some more balanced reflections on taking the fear out of the shirt, the psychology of penalties that, you know, was it the Switzerland game where England were superb in that with the penalties, the end of the club cliques. I mean, knowing that you were coming on this part, I spoke to some England fans last night.

14:35So very balanced, home and away. And their perspective is, if you told us after Nice 2016, when England went out, after Sam Allardyce and pints of wine, that we would go on a journey with an under-21 manager and someone who'd been at Middlesbrough, who would take us to the semifinals. and I've criticised you and people know that. But taking us on that journey I've been very good. Do you want a little pop? If you'd been this positive six years previous Henry I might still be in the job. Why'd you think I sat in the middle? Thanks very much CP. But no, it's true. But the point I'm making on Christian's point this concert I don't buy this concertina point because I think they would have been as you say it's very emotional we're obsessed with sport and the time to worry about England is when people aren't obsessed and there's apathy.

15:25which there was at halftime in the Malta game when the England fans picked up their flags and went in. But you changed around, as I say, you took the fear out of the shirt, the penalties, the culture. You brought the families onside. You did that brilliant thing before Russia, which I think was on the back of you going to the Super Bowl. And you actually saw how they dealt with the media there and how we could then, you could use the media as conduits to get your message of positivity over to the fans who were very sceptical, probably more critical at the time of England than the press were. And that changed everything.

15:57What I would say is, you know, you've done what everybody does. You've focused on all those things. And I sometimes feel that people don't recognize tactically

16:12Gareth Southgate:we played in systems that got the best out of the players we had. There was a huge amount of tactical thinking and discussion that went in. And that kind of gets washed over now. So, you know, I accept all of it, but there's a reality on the amount of detail. You know, people are seeing the impact Steve Holland's had going into Manchester United. It was a brilliant number two for me. But I think sometimes everybody focuses on culture and there's, you know, we had some really good performances, some really good nights. So to come back to not signing pre-tournament and your reputation being on the line, for lots of people who've had the England manager's job, their reputation never recovered.

17:03Gareth Southgate:And in a sense, I'm slightly in that bracket. Because if you look at any time my name is linked with a job, there's a pile on of I'll send my season tickets back. Is that a Middlesbrough thing rather than an England thing? Well that's also a strange piece of evidence to go on though isn't it? Because I was 35 I'd only taken the under 14s at Middlesbrough for my coaching badges so inevitably I didn't have one season I had three seasons in the Prem my first win was against Mourinho's Chelsea we had wins against Arsenal we had wins against Rafa with Liverpool ultimately we got relegated in the third year but you know finishing 11th and 12th in the Prem as a 35 year old I mean not even Keith Andrews type rookie because Keith had some coaching roles had no coaching role so how can you know everything that you need to know?

18:06Gareth I remember coming up to see you when you were a manager there and very interesting lightning interview but one of the things you said was it's important that English coaches do well and I don't know whether that was a sort of a message to Fleet Street as was or whether that was almost like a sort of plea but did you feel do you feel that homegrown coaches are scrutinised more than a big name foreign coach coming in whether it's to England or to a club well I think what can happen is that foreign coaches end up starting in a league that is they perhaps get experience of European football they've got a chance of winning a league that isn't as competitive as the Premier League so they arrive with people knowing less about them you know less history and they've won a trophy so they're a winner whereas a lot of the English coaches

19:02Gareth Southgate:their opportunity comes by getting promoted with a club and then logically you've got a team with a small budget and it's a bloody struggle. I'm thinking about Amorim at Man United. In reality, 38, two years experience in a tiny league and yet there was a glamour associated with that appointment. Because we don't really know, do we? I'm thinking, Sam, the Aladichie gag. There's something in that. If you had described Ruben Amorim's profile to the Man United fan base as John Smith, who's had two years in Scotland, won a trophy in a tiny league, and he's got the Man U job at 38 with that experience.

19:46You'd have said, are you having a laugh, mate? And yet Ruben was not much more than that. Read across Scotland, Portugal, two years, two years, former player, former player. And yet he was on everybody's shortlist. I fell for that. And in reality now, with the benefit of hindsight, you're thinking exactly what you're saying.

20:04Gareth Southgate:But you've had to appoint managers. so if the choice is somebody with some experience with some of the biggest games in football but there's going to be a backlash like I'll get that at Villa because they still don't forgive me for leaving but if you if there's going to be a backlash or you can appoint a European coach that's on paper got a good record but it's going to be smooth and there's a positive feel at the start you know I think if you go in as a manager on the back foot that's hard from the off. I think that's a very difficult position to be in. Yeah, well, I think Thomas had a bit of that, if I'm honest.

20:43Thomas Frank at Spurs. He never really got going for him. And I think to a degree,

20:47Gareth Southgate:that's part of the battle Liam's got at Chelsea, because it's been an internal Strasbourg appointment. So as if it's not hard enough for him, he's having to deal with that. And how can he overcome all of that? I don't think, if you're saying, by the way, and I think you are, that those factors influence chief executives in their appointments. They do and they should. They do and they should. If you can't have that smell at Spurs, that there will be swathes of Spurs fans who obsess about, A, playing style. B, I think we can say quite honestly, you know, that terrible mismatch between its expectation and status and reality that they see themselves perhaps, you know, still in a Champions League final with Poch six years ago and feel that a Brentford manager is underpowered to be the Spurs manager.

21:40And I think you have to have that. It felt to me that might not start well. And it didn't. I mean, the results were okay, but I felt from the get-go that fans weren't sure about that. I think you've got to think about that. It's up to the individual to step up as well because you can't go into Tottenham Hotspur and say, oh, it's like Brentford. You have to think as a Tottenham Hotspur manager and whether that's the philosophy, the DNA, whether it's to dare us to do the game is about glory absolutely you've got to step up to that there was an element of that with David Moyes when he tried to follow Alex Ferguson

22:11Gareth Southgate:Yeah well let me defend the managers because there are mitigating things for Thomas to win matches without your best player or best couple of players is hard I'd say he's been without six or seven of his starting team at the beginning of the season I'm looking at Tottenham squad thinking that's not a bad squad now everybody's looking at them at the weekend against Arsenal saying this is an horrendous squad but really that's a second 11 but Bournemouth with a smaller squad had injuries I mean Tottenham and Oxford don't have a monopoly on injuries well that's yeah I don't know all the ins and outs of Bournemouth in fairness but what there would be at Bournemouth is different expectation for sure and there is a difference in having to manage one of those big clubs with the intensity of the spotlight, with 100 press conferences a season, with a different type of player that earns more, that's a global superstar or a superstar in their own country.

23:15There are different dynamics to all of that compared to a brilliantly well-run mid-table club like a Brighton or a Brentford where just culturally slightly different. And you've got to adapt to all of those. Let's talk about that big player point. In your book, there was a line that really intrigued me. Lots of lines in the book. Good point. Good point. We don't have to sell the book yet. No. No, okay. There was a line that I wanted to ask you about is a better way of putting it. You know, you're very big on red lines in the area of values and culture, that the manager should be true to their values at all times.

23:57and whilst you have to make allowances, and I'm paraphrasing here, that never to the point where you breach those red line issues on core values that you think are integral to the culture you're trying to create in the organisation. And I read it and I wondered whether it really is a red line or whether it's a little grey. In other words, is there a level of talent where you just have to find a way to accommodate that talent, even if you've got reservations at the value level. Yeah, I think it depends on what it is that has caused the stance you're taking. So what do I mean by that? If you've got a superstar player who doesn't work quite as hard without the ball for the team, but the team and you know that they're going to win you football matches, then I think everybody goes with that.

24:54so I can remember years ago Stuart Pearce talking about I think it was Pierre Van Hooydonk at Forest look I don't mind doing his running he's going to score the goals that get me a win bonus at the end of the and I think that applies there's some top talents that might not be the absolute elite because they can't do that other side of the game so when you're signing players there's always some small flaw The biggest clubs get fewer floors in the players, but normally there's a physical floor or a psychological floor or a technical floor. What about off-field stuff? What about off-field character issues?

25:36And I think that's where the line comes. So, a disciplinary incident where what happens is you're the coach, you're in a team meeting, you're making points about timekeeping or behavioural things. If there's an incident with a young player, that's easy to make a stance and say, you're not playing this weekend and you can look like the big guy and we've got discipline. When that's your best player, now you're in a different situation because the whole group are looking at you to say, right, what are you going to do about this one then? I've been a player. I've sat in dressing rooms thinking, this will be interesting.

26:19Is it one rule for one? And we had a couple of those moments where we had to leave a player out of the team or we chose to not select a player in a squad. What about me constantly bending your ear that I thought the greatest player I'd ever seen was Jack. And I never felt, Jack Grealish, sorry, Adrian. I always felt you weren't totally convinced. The huge clamour for Jack was€21. Jack's best position,€11. Raheem Sterling was probably our if not our most important player very up there very close to being our best player alongside Harry Kane at that time and Jack was competing against Raheem and also Jack that year had missed I think the last two months of the season so physically he wasn't quite where he needed to be Is he a difficult sub as well?

27:12He was a great sub for us in that time but in terms of he wants to start every game and does he get fidgety if he's on the bench? No, I would say I would actually say I don't see that he is one of the best at getting on you know he'll go training the next day of course he wants to play every player wants to play and I probably had to have a lot of conversations with him about not starting but I have to say you know with us his mentality never dipped around those things and he loves football So the training ground is one of the most joyous places for him because he just gets a ball at his feet and everything else is gone.