All eyes glued to show: Southgate’s shared agonies have felt vivid and real
Every game from now on could be Gareth Southgate’s last as England manager. Photograph: Ryan Pierse/UEFA/Getty Images
Say what you like about England’s performances in Germany, nearly five hours of football that have felt like something to be endured grimly, sport reimagined as a kind of punishment beating. Say what you like about England’s performances in Germany, which have, at times, reproduced the physical sensation of being stabbed through the eyeballs with a kebab skewer made entirely from boredom. Say what you like, say what you like. But England haven’t been dull.
Actually, this isn’t true. England have also been dull. A man from Surrey has had to deny falling asleep during the second half against Slovenia – a huge boost, no doubt, for Gareth’s brave lions – after being pictured resting his eyes at the Cologne Stadium. One daily newspaper has launched a campaign urging people to just, you know, like the England football team a bit more, like a kindly class teacher encouraging a shy child to join in at playtime.
England have been tenacious and indigestible. They have been individually jaded, collectively unbalanced, stuck in a pattern where misplaced passes and discomfort on the ball grow into a doom-spiral of anxiety and joylessness.
But apart from that. Apart from all that. What England haven’t been is ignorable. This has been the really striking feature of the three Group C games, and now the prospect of Slovakia on Sunday night in the transport hell that is Gelsenkirchen’s Arena AufSchalke. People can’t take their eyes off this thing.
The games may have been frustrating. But they have also been startlingly raw, authentic in their shared agonies. Eyes have been glued to this show. The fans in Cologne were noisily engaged right to the end. This is how it is in Germany, seeing the team in the flesh. England’s games feel like epic story beats, stop-the-clock moments of shared national angst, sport and identity and yearning all bundled into a single living show.
There are two obvious reasons why this matters and why it is also different to the standard England tournament collapse. The first is something to do with authenticity. There is no doubt where the real enemies of sport lie, the things that might just end up killing it. Greed, venal administrators, political interference and rampant commercialism; and above all the associated absence of feeling, the intrusion of managed celebrity entertainment product into the collective spectacle.
During the second half of Portugal against Turkey at the BVB Stadion Dortmund it felt like the whole game might just collapse into a selfie-grabbing celebrity content show. There is a sense out there that football’s endgame, its final incarnation, is a pay-per-view stream of Salt Bae sprinkling condiment on a Ronaldo lookalike in the Fifa freestyle zone, while David Guetta does keep-ups with Mohammed bin Salman.
This is the comfort of England in Germany. For all the basic drudgery involved in watching them, England’s struggles have felt undeniably real, vivid and un-commodified. Nobody is here to fawn over an image, or be near an event for likes. It is an authentically involved spectacle, misery and yearning that is real, even if these are perhaps in the end also a projection of anxieties from another place.
Something is being felt deeply. It is emotion not consumption, a piece of Weltschmerz performance art that has no script and no promise of an easy ending. So, thanks for that, lads. Now could we get back to having at least one left-sided player in the team? And can someone please wake Harry up?
Perhaps the most gripping part of England’s Euros at this stage is Southgate’s own plot-line. Starting with Slovakia, we are now at a stage where every game actually could be his last in charge. The wheel keeps turning, Gareth still strapped to its spokes, unbowed, beard jutting, still talking about culture and process, as Fortuna rotates between the fire and the sky. Where will it leave him?
The point being, even this close, no one has any real idea how it is going to end. And this is the second point about a different kind of England tournament agony. Unlike previous managerial endgames, which can be summarised as the complete staged collapse of Roy Hodgson, the complete staged collapse of Kevin Keegan, the complete staged collapse of Graham Taylor and so on, the Southgate arc is still open.
The contrast is clearly stark between peak Gareth, iconic Gareth, stag-do-costume Gareth out there punching the air in the Samara sun while an entire stand sings Southgate You’re the One, You Still Turn Me On; and brave post-match pitch-walk Gareth feeling the v-signs whizz past his ears in Cologne. This looks like a tragedy. But it could also become a comedy, a redemption story. The complete collapse of Gareth could easily turn into the dogged and unexpected reassembling of Gareth.
This is one reason it still feels quietly epic. The criticism around England has been deserved. They have played poorly. For the first time under Southgate a tournament team has been bungled. But talk of a return to the chronic unravellings of the years-of-hurt era is premature. It is possible this time that the course can be altered.
There is muscle memory of knockout victories in this era. England have still been solid and rugged. They also have some very good players. They have a decent chance of beating Slovakia in Gelsenkirchen if they play as they can. Even another grudging 1-0 would be progress, momentum, a narrowing of the sniper sights.
And Slovakia themselves have offered up a surprising degree of shit-talk in advance of the game, talk about how England are not playing like a team (you don’t say) and have the pressure of golden generation-ism on them (yawn). Slovakia are loving it. Slovakia are beat-boxing in press conferences. Well, here comes England, and our own familiar juggernaut of pain.
The suggestion is Southgate will make just one change, Kobbie Mainoo replacing Conor Gallagher. It seems right. England don’t need revved-up energy. They need someone who looks like they enjoy playing football. This won’t add balance on the left, but then picking Anthony Gordon to run into space against a low block doesn’t make much sense either. There will be frustration at the predicted absence of Cole Palmer.
But this is also Southgate being true to his steady-as-she-goes self, which is in the end all anyone really has. The initial response to England’s poor performances was to hold a series of meetings. You have to love it, really. The call is to let loose the untamed spirit of Albion, give us joy, give us blood, give us an un-leashing. Gareth will give you meetings.
But then, Southgate is basically on his own out here, an England manager who can win only by winning completely, and even then perhaps not, giving the level of entrenched opposition out there. The criticism has been based on poor selection and poor structure. But it is also disproportionate, not just to England’s performances, but to the basic limits of sport, football, people kicking a ball.
The criticism has been based on feelings. If feels like a kind of national psychodrama in play. In this binary age, Southgate is the first football manager to fall victim to the truism that all political careers end in failure. Over time you reach critical mass. Enough people have been made into sceptics and foes that there is no coming back.
On the other hand perhaps that swell of emotion, the support of England’s fans, who have been great here, even the interjections of a self-facilitating media node calling England “shit” for clicks, might serve to create some energy inside this team not just around it.
It has been a weird tournament. Nine of the last 12 group games ended 0-0, 1-0 or 1-1. Some have suggested this means they lacked excitement. But in the flesh the games have been loud, gripping, even draining, such is the intensity. And say what you like about England in Germany. They may have played like a team that is on some basic level allergic to the modern world. But it is also impossible not to hunger after the next gruelling instalment.