He is 53-yrs-old. He is soft spoken with a gentle demeanour. He was given the reins of the very popular English national team, a country that has the biggest, richest and most exciting league world over. A country that claims to be the birth place of football. It is a huge honour to coach the national team known as, The Three Lions. He is Mr. Gareth Southgate.
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So many perspectives on what Southgate should do. By the way, nice perspectives your Postecoglou brings each time there, @blanchy and @talesfrmthecrypt.
Please permit me to delve straight in, I have to manage my strength/time wisely because I have been on some health medication lately.
I see the manager as a very smart guy, with a great attitude to work. Yet holistically for me, in terms of quality he's not such an upgrade on someone like a David Moyes.
Now I like that Southgate does not pretend to be who he is not, let's call it being meek(vontrolled power). He is taking advantage of a very well coached English team. Never before in England's history have we had this amount of proper technical coaching of English players. The huge influx of foreign coaches over the last decade, into England has made the average English player to now have an European flavour, now they can easily fit into the Spanish or Italian leagues, unlike years back.
It has never been this good in all English footballing history. England(their clubs) have virtually thrown all their footballing philosophy out of the window and they continue to eliminate any left overs by the day. Now you can be sure that a Palmer or Foden or Saka or Kane will hit the ground running in Spain or somewhere. Kane is already doing it in Germany. This was not a guven in a time as recent as the David Beckam era, it was much worse way back.
The English national team thus came under intense pressure to go with this trend. In came a Southgate, who is supposed to follow the modern trend.
It's just that he really doesn't have a grasp of the roots of the modern trend, so he really can't follow it faithfully. But he is very smart, he knows how to do what in computer lingo we call, "copy and paste".
It's just like in my very young days in school, I didn't know how some of my classmates were great at making/inventing drawings, they just knew how to put what they see on paper and it appears so real. It puzzled me a lot then. Indeed they were talented.
But there's something I was confident about, it was that I can copy exactly what(a diagram) I see. So when the teacher gives a home-work that we should re-draw a certain diagram( in our textbook) into our notebooks, it would be difficult for you to differentiate my diagram from that of my classmate who is talented.
Gareth Southgate is smart enough and very hardworking that he will give you something very close to the real thing. He's not about to get knocked out in the next round, he is smart enough to tweak things here and there and get into the very hearts of his players. However the result will always be that England will just be there, thereabouts under him, not the very best. Well it's nice the gaffer is humble enough not to be loud mouthed. [Though secretly I think he offended my dear White of Arsenal]
Already Southgate will leave after this tourney(because he ain't winning it), then England should now go for a truly modern coach. [He has said he would quit if he doesn't win this competition]
Let me be even more direct.
Give this set of players Spanish citizenship and let them be Spain's squad, coached by the kind of top quality coaches the Spanish FA ALWAYS employs(Pep,Enrique,etc), this squad would be nothing but world beaters.
Infact an Italian FA doesn't even need all this quality, to mould a very dangerous team.
For Italy, just give only 5 or 6 of this English squad, Italian passports, add other Italian players and let an Italian coach do the magic.
What are we not saying?
The Italians? They are ready to reach the semi-finals of a competition with many unknown quantities.
So all the best to Mr. Gareth Southgate, in proper context he's not doing badly.
THANKS FOR READING
