Gareth Southgate: Why I left England, Tuchel v Bellingham & Man United next?

16:00Gareth Southgate:did you allow phones in the dressing room? And when did you allow players to look at their phones? And I asked that because I was talking to somebody recently about World Cup planning. And one of the things that they were talking about was if these weather delays come in during a game in the World Cup and you're 2-0 down or whatever and go in and players get their phones out and look at how they're being being eviscerated by their fans and I mean that's the level of detail that some of the planning is going into did you allow how did it work with phones

16:35Gabby Logan:well I didn't ban them because it's not a phone now is it, you know nobody phones nobody phones people but they've got their music on there so they might be listening to their music They might be watching something on the coach. So there's a reality that these devices are present in people's lives. And I think you've just got to talk to them about when's a good time to switch off? What apps might you access at certain times? Because definitely there's not a lot of happiness to be found in trailing through social media. I mean, straight after a game, that always worried me that players were likely to be attacked for their performances.

17:15Gabby Logan:it's even across the 90 minutes you might win at the end if you're going back to the first 15 20 minutes you could have received all sorts of negative so i think even young people are recognizing this is dangerous territory now and you know we've probably now lived through a generation of people who've had phones and i think parents are now recognizing there was something that none of us were happy and comfortable with but nobody wants to be the first parent to stop the kid at a certain age or but i do think i think people will move away from what age they allow kids to access phones and how often and i think some kids actually it'll be a relief oh totally i think they feel pressure to to use them and they know themselves when they're not

18:03Mark Watson:with it that they feel better and they you know and so it's that's your experience as well absolutely so self-policing has to be you know the way because the genie's out the bottle right it's It was the Wild West and it wasn't policed. And we've now got to somehow claw it back. So the only way you can do that is that whole kind of social contract thing, isn't it, that we talk about a lot as well, that it has to be your own kind of effort to be part of that conversation. And I mean that literally, that you put your phone down and you're part of society and you're not in a silo. And I know that also kind of feeds into some of the material that you shared with us during the Dimbleby lecture, which was very powerful.

18:38Mark Watson:And we'd asked you to come on, actually, at that time. I understand you were kind of inundated after that because there was an opportunity for you, not just Gareth, the England football manager leader, but to show us the things that you've noticed, the things you care about in terms of particularly young men, because that's what you fundamentally deal with and have dealt with in your career. And, you know, I reached out to you and said, you know, what can we do? Because we're all on the same page here that, you know, there needs to be, you mentioned youth clubs, there needs to be something else.

19:07Mark Watson:you provided those something else for your team and you saw how that built community so is this something you're still thinking a lot about and and maybe it's somewhere that we might

19:19Gabby Logan:see you venture further yeah yeah it's something i'm very passionate about i think it's an area that i've become more and more conscious of and once i delivered the lecture you know it's very easy to raise issues and then not do anything about it you know I used to talk about youth football in England and then Trevor Brookings phoned me and said would you like to come and do something about it and you kind of go oh well right I better have it really so and I feel the same about this landscape for young people that of course it's easy to say this should be happening and that should be happening but we need people to grab hold of it and frankly that's not so easy for politicians and you know i know our perception would be that it should be what they're doing but the urgent takes over from the important and i've definitely noticed things like mentoring where there's a stage even if you've got we know there's lots of fatherless families and that's difficult so for young men i think they do look for male role models at certain times there are less male teachers at schools and there's then even if you have a supportive family unit I think as a young man there's a point you look outside the family for mentors and having the right sort of people in young people's lives whether that's their friendship group or mentors the right role models are so crucial and clearly online there are great examples of the wrong sort of role models so we've got to try and provide that sort of capability and I'm also meeting a lot of people my age and of course generally younger who want to volunteer and do something but aren't quite sure where to go so there's definitely something in this space that I think because of the profile of the role I had I might be able to elevate some of the good work that's going on and maybe join some of the dots up because I just feel like there's so much talent in our country and the narrative around our country is constant negativity and yet we can help young people to see a better a better way forward and we've we've got it's on us as but it needs action doesn't it well it does it needs action it needs it needs you know somebody like

21:35Gareth Southgate:trevor whoever whoever in the mentoring world is the equivalent of trevor brookie yeah right you've got to grasp this yeah and and i think you know i'm in a position i work with

21:48Gabby Logan:organisations like the King's Trust who all their work is 16 to 25, they have existing mentoring schemes they know how that works, there are other organisations like them that I think we can tap into and combine and make it hopefully make a difference

22:05Gareth Southgate:And that feels more worthwhile and suitable to your skill set than managing Manchester United

22:16Gabby Logan:but the first thing is they've got a manager who seems to be doing pretty well at the moment but yeah look I've had 37 odd years in football it's been amazing experience and if you told me as a 15 year old that's what would happen then you know I'd have been absolutely delighted but also there's other things in life and having had the job I just had where it was for my country so there was a bigger purpose than just the football that's really hard to replicate whereas working with young people as part of what I do now it doesn't mean I've not ambitions to perhaps grow a business or work on leadership and other areas as well but definitely this there's something in me that this work around young people perhaps because I've been working with that sort of age group as well recently and I can see that there is a chance to make a difference and to give groups belief and to unite people a bit more.

23:19Mark Watson:And this kind of feeds into a quote from Arsene Wenger that you talk about in the book that he said to you it's about the long term basically and you've got to as a football manager believe you're in the job for a long time but understand that you could go tomorrow and you have to leave an organisation in a better place. you went into that England job I feel clearly with that as your mindset that however long your duration and who knows the previous manager didn't last very long who knows how long you're going to be in that job but you wanting to leave that organization in a better place the current manager of England has a very short-term contract and relatively and clearly has one one thing on

24:00Gareth Southgate:his to-do list well short-term brief as well that's what I mean short-term brief short-term

24:04Mark Watson:contract you've got to win a world cup does that feel like the right decision to give somebody

24:10Gabby Logan:such a short-term goal in a place like that well i mean only only people within the fa will be able to explain what that process was what other options there were at the time clearly it's a different appointment in that you're right i went to affect youth football to change i'd written it down change the perceptions of english players on a world stage because i knew there was talent there somehow i stumbled into the first team manager's job and what we're doing here and we had a pretty enjoyable eight years but but my my way of managing anything is always to be thinking short, mid and long term.

24:56Gabby Logan:Doesn't matter if I'm going to be there or not. In my view, part of leadership is you can't ignore short term results because firstly, that will buy you time if you want to be there longer and time allows you to make change. But you should always be thinking, what am I leaving behind as well? And if it's the right thing to put a young player in and give them their debut, I'm thinking back when we put Declan Rice in at 18, 19 bucaio um jude at 17 they were the right cause it didn't necessarily mean we'd win the next game and you know we'd take friendlies against brazil or france or spain knowing that we might lose those games but you'd learn so much from those games so if it was all about protecting my win percentage we wouldn't have played brazil yeah but but i knew that we would benefit in the long term and you have to accept that then those defeats mean you get criticism and but but we knew all along that yeah but hang on a minute that he's going to be better for that 90 minutes and stretching him against the better opponent that's going to that's going to help the team so I still think that inevitably is the case I still think Thomas has put young players in you know Lewis Skelly and players like that so he's not just looking at tomorrow he you know he's

26:22Gareth Southgate:looking a little bit further down the line with that how do you view his treatment of jude bellingham at the moment and i think you're really interested you're a really interesting person to ask that because obviously you've coached him but also you've talked about the long-term view and if you were probably still head coach and thinking you know jude could be here for another 10 years as part of my setup. But then going back to talking about those challenging decisions where you might have to annoy one person for the greater good of the group. So when you see what is going on, how do you view it?

27:00Gabby Logan:Well, I can't view it in its entirety because I'm not watching Jude every week for Real Madrid. I don't know what's happened in the camps. I know he's been injured for a period. So, you know, in the next couple of weeks, there'll be another squad, I guess, we'll know a little bit more about the whole landscape, really, as to whether he's picked or not. So I'm mindful that when you're in the position Thomas is in, you have far more information, you'll have lots of other decisions to make, and everybody used to wade in on my decisions. Yeah. And I'd be thinking, well, there are some things that I can share and there's things I can't share and there's things, you know, you asked me about something earlier with Ben White that I don't think is appropriate to share.

27:53Gabby Logan:So there's all of those dynamics. I can only say, you know, I loved working with Jude, great kid. Did you ever get frustrated about the arms going up in the air

28:04Gareth Southgate:and looking frustrated at his teammates? Because that became a narrative of the last year.

28:11Mark Watson:And he did apologise afterwards when Thomas Tuchel described it as his mum thinking it would be repulsive, which was such an extreme word, which I think was lost in translation. But you got what he was saying, which was kind of people that didn't know him and didn't know what he gave in training and didn't know what he was like in the group, might think some of that behaviour was not becoming. Is it probably a kinder word?

28:36Gabby Logan:I can only go back to my time with Jude where you know he was 17 when he came in so it was actually so young I had to ask permission to message him because he was a minor and you know and he wasn't really meant to change with the rest of the team you know there's all those little things that that are going on I mean it he has been a remarkably mature for his age if you look at the way he's dealt with moving to Real Madrid the performances the way he's spoken on camera I think everybody for years has been saying my goodness and he's still a really young guy so you know there's not going to be perfection in in everything with young people but I'm sure you know I think as we speak he's scored in the last three four games for Real Madrid that's totally Thomas' decision I don't know where he sees him compared to who's in that area Cole Palmer, Morgan Rodgers Foden so there isn't depth in every position in England but there's a lot of depth in that number 10 shirt I can only say that his goal against Serbia, his goal against Slovakia other moments for us were critical to us getting to a final and what he has got is the mindset to be able to perform on the biggest stage for Real Madrid as he did with England and there's something in that he's got that mentality that a really top player has to have

30:11Mark Watson:Talking about strength and depth when Danny Welbeck scored again at the weekend we did a little bit on Match of the Day about the fact that he's at six goals the top scoring English centre forward in the Premier League at the moment. Obviously, Harry Kane's got a lot more than that in the Bundesliga so far, and he is England's absolute out-and-out number nine. Are you kind of surprised that's an area at the moment that does seem to be a little bit weaker? Harry Kane at 32, I believe, is definitely not being replaced by anybody else very soon.

30:45Gabby Logan:Well, I think for the last few years, if you look across world football, and I've been in FIFA and UEFA discussions about this there was a bit of a disappearance of the old-fashioned number nine Spain probably started a little bit of that um Pep's fault again you know playing Messi as a nine doing something just to go and win everything but you know all of a sudden team you know Fabregas played for Spain in that tournament didn't he as a false nine and so there was a move away from the old-fashioned I mean I don't think Harry Kane is an old-fashioned centre-forward because he's so good at coming and receiving and linking play but um there was a move to a more fluid type of forward a ronaldo playing down the middle or that sort of thing and i think we saw that in youth football as well we saw that in junior football where there weren't so many number nines you know i remember in our junior international teams solanke as a youngster you He was one of the best in Europe without a doubt.

31:55Gabby Logan:Tammy Abraham at that time. But then players need the chance to go and play. So talent needs the chance to play. And in some of their formative years, they were at big clubs where they didn't get the chance to play and develop and mature. And so Dominic then ended up going to Bournemouth and he's kind of at Spurs. And that's been a longer route than we might have thought when he was younger. So I recognize what you're saying. I mean, Danny Welbeck's had an amazing period.

32:23Mark Watson:But at 35 this month and six years since he played for England, you took him to 2018. To Russia, yeah.

32:28Gabby Logan:And even then people were saying, well, should you be taking Danny? And I mean, great credit to him that he's been reborn at Brighton, really.

32:38Gareth Southgate:It's slightly annoying this because we're going to have to draw this to an end shortly and we could probably do another hour and a half. But by the time you finish the book, and it's not just about, you know, England it's not a memoir is it it's to do with leadership but how did you reflect on your time in charge of England and and bearing in mind how how much you study leadership and the people you talk to and how life works did you feel by the end of it that you had I mean it's a bit of a crude term this but the you'd reach the end of your shelf life with them not I mean not in general Yeah, yeah, yeah.

33:18Gabby Logan:Well, it's possibly in general.

33:21Mark Watson:We always like to end on a high.

33:25Gabby Logan:I felt that my presence had become divisive. Internally or externally? Oh, externally. Right. Yeah, no, I mean, the players and FA and staff, brilliant. You know, I mean, I felt that, yeah, we were well in credit with all of those people. but you know you couldn't deny that I was polarizing the fan base and I think there comes a point as a leader and I've seen this in other leadership positions where if that is the case there's a risk you jeopardize performance of everything else and I didn't want to be in that position I felt in that last Euros definitely some of the fan base they were being critical of the team, but really they wanted to get at me.

34:12Gabby Logan:And I think by taking myself out of that was maybe the right time to give the team space. I didn't necessarily think they were going to be better immediately because, you know, the fact is it's the same group of players. But I felt that my presence was starting to divide opinion. And from a personal perspective, there was less joy in the wins you know and then you've got to think well actually why am I doing this then if yeah if if winning a semi-final is with you for five minutes and then you're immediately thinking no but I've got to get the next bit right otherwise it's then you know there's got to be some joy in what you're doing so I just think it all around it was probably the right time for change um and i'd love that to have been that we were in trafalgar square with a trophy at the end um but in fairness we didn't play well enough in that whole tournament to say we deserve to win um and if anything i felt i you know if i reflect on my management through different stages of my life and coaching career you know i feel i managed that tournament as well as any because we had so many issues with fitness and form and balance and positions and from a leadership perspective you know I reflect on that and I'm very self-critical but I reflect on that in in a pretty positive way actually.

35:44Mark Watson:I know that was the final question but just because you mentioned Trafalgar Square there Serena Viegman's done that twice now yeah taking a team to a Euros final and got over the line very different styles of doing it from the the Euros that was held here to the one that we witnessed in Switzerland this year. How much did you two work together? How much did she learn from what you were doing in terms of culture? And how close do you think the identities of the Lionesses and the men's team are?

36:13Gabby Logan:That's a bit of a mixed bag, really, because we got on very well. But our calendars were quite strange, because we would be in camp and then they go in camp Serena would take a break after her camp so actually we you couldn't say we were together every Monday and you know she's watching games at different times of the year I mean I enjoyed my interactions with her I think she will feel I was very supportive of women's football because you know I remember when Hope Powell was managing and it was tough for Hope to get anywhere with support i think sue campbell did an amazing job coming in and as sue does if you know i've ruffled she's been ruffled a few families and got more funding and you know so there's a lot of things went on in the background um and i think also it's fair to say that you know what mark sampson did with england what phil neville did they got to semi-finals and so the steps weren't so far equally Serena's done an amazing job you know not only with us but with Holland as well so there were things that we definitely shared everybody in the England environment for example the penalty scenarios a lot of that research was shared across both teams we then refined things they refined things and I learned a little bit of their refinements so you know I'm not going to say I taught Serena or anything she's you know she's a world-class coach and she's deserves every bit of credit it's not for me to take one bit of that away from her um and it's been brilliant to see their success you know it's a shame for some of the girls who were so integral just before that

37:57Mark Watson:moment like Steph Horton and um it was nice but you need those people don't you that you do on the

38:04Gabby Logan:The journey of a team, you know, some of those that paved the way. I think, you know, some of the girls that are playing today will realise how important their part was.

38:14Mark Watson:So on that, if Thomas Tuchel leads England to World Cup success next summer, how would you feel about that?

38:20Gabby Logan:I would take my hat off to him. It would be brilliant. He'd have had to do an incredible amount of hard work to do that. And I'm an England fan. so I had more appearances for England than anybody else. I've been to eight seniors tournaments as a player and a coach. Yeah, since I was this big I had my England scarf on watching us play so that's never going to change.

38:44Mark Watson:You probably quite rightly feel that you were part of that journey as you've just described for the women's game then so it must be for the men's.

38:50Gabby Logan:Well, I'm going to take a different route because it's so hard. We can put things in place and I feel that we left things is we cleared a lot of barriers to winning. You know, we hadn't won a knockout game for 10 years. We won in Spain for the first time in 50, in Italy the first time in 60. We won three penalty shootouts instead of everybody hiding behind their sofa. People think we've got a chance with those things, but still, any tournament, it's knockout football, you have to go and deliver in that moment. So whatever they do, he'll deserve enormous credit.

39:26Gareth Southgate:That's ended on a positive, hasn't it? I think so.

39:29Gabby Logan:Yeah.

39:30Mark Watson:Yeah, I'd like to think so. Thanks so much, Gareth. Thank you. There's still the microphone going. This will be good.

39:36Gareth Southgate:Thank you so much. And Dear England, Lessons in Leadership by Gareth Southgate is out on November the 6th. The Sports Agents.

39:48Gareth Southgate:The Sports Agents.

39:50Gabby Logan:With Gaby Logan and Mark Chapman.

39:55Mark Watson:So, Gareth Southgate, as always, fascinating to chat to. I don't know about you, but I don't get the feeling he's bluffing us. I don't feel he's going back into football anytime soon.

40:05Gareth Southgate:No, I don't think it's something that when I think when he sees what club managers go through. In fact, we were talking about it before we started the interview, the day to day stress on club managers that I don't think that's for him. He was saying one of the good things about the international manager, if you're taking the whole holistic approach, you could go up. I need to be at that school assembly on a Friday. And actually, international management allows you to do that. So I just can't see club management being a fit for him at the moment.

40:39Mark Watson:No, I feel like he is all about projects that have some longevity, have some kind of legacy. And he did kind of light up talking about mentorship with young men in particular. So I think maybe we'll see him in some kind of quasi-political role. He's not going to go into politics, clearly, but it will affect...

40:58Gareth Southgate:You wouldn't wish that on anybody, would you? No, absolutely not. Make sure you subscribe or follow and leave a review. You can catch up with all of our past episodes on YouTube, Global Player, or wherever you get your podcasts.

41:08Mark Watson:And as always, we love hearing from you. Get in touch, the sportsagents at global.com or messages on social media or via the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening.

41:15Gareth Southgate:This has been a Global Player original production.