Two days before my 18th birthday, 24 June 2018 heralded both England’s World Cup tie with Panama and my first proper day’s work.
After a torrid eight years of Three Lions fandom, by 2018 my childhood fanaticism for English football had waned to a wearied apathy. A relative latecomer to football, my first memory of the England national team is Rob Green frantically clawing at thin air like he’d just dropped his first-born off a cliff.
From Frank Lampard’s not-goal to Iceland, via Andrea Pirlo’s sangfroid and Raheem Sterling’s not-goal, loving the England national team in my early teenage years left such disfiguring scars that I almost decided to pack it in altogether.
Waiting tables at a local gastropub, I was aware that the game was going on, but didn’t mind missing it. An uninspiring 2-1 win over Tunisia had opened England’s campaign in familiar fashion. A young team and unknown manager did little to assure me that Russia would be any different to the previous tribulations.
I eventually saw someone watching the game on their phone and asked about the score. “6-0”, came the scarcely believable reply. By the end of that World Cup, Gareth Southgate and the Three Lions had provided the backing track to the best summer of my short life.
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Rating England's 14 managerial options if Gareth Southgate resigns11 December, 2022Fifty of us crowded around the only phone with signal at our school prom to watch England win their first major tournament penalty shootout of my lifetime. The semi-final exit to Croatia ultimately felt like success dressed as failure.
Three years later, I was one of 30 people crammed into the front room of a dingy student house to watch Sterling and Harry Kane down Germany at Euro 2020. Weeks after, I danced with thousands around Leicester Square after the semi-final win over Denmark in a demonstration of genuine English national pride I had never seen before from my peers.
In six years as England manager, Southgate has redefined how multiple generations of English children and young adults view both the national team and themselves.
More than that, he has salvaged our relationship with our country, temporarily unifying the decimated post-Brexit English identity one tournament at a time.
The predominant political memories of those of us born post-2000 are austerity, Brexit and Boris Johnson. Believing your country cares about or represents you is hard when all evidence suggests otherwise.
I owe Southgate, alongside the likes of Ben Stokes and Sarina Wiegman, a significant proportion of my national pride. I know I am not alone in that assertion.
This England squad are defined by togetherness, perseverance, and a modest yet self-assured innovative brilliance. Unlike many of the English footballers of yesterday, or the British politicians of today, they are neither selfish, arrogant nor petty.
These are values instilled by Southgate and writ large across our TV screens every time England play. They have become among the best possible role models to England’s young people.
In the build-up to Euro 2020, Gareth Southgate published an open letter to English fans. The Guardian described it as “one of the most powerful statements of modern Englishness”, and I cannot disagree.
“I think about all the young kids who will be watching this summer, filling out their first wall charts,” Southgate wrote.
“No matter what happens, I just hope that their parents, teachers and club managers will turn to them and say, ‘Look. That’s the way to represent your country. That’s what England is about. That is what’s possible.'”
These children will grow up believing our footballers and their coach to be the best of us, believing that success is inherent to English footballing DNA. After six years of Southgate, I believe that too.
It is very easy to forget that Southgate’s predecessor was Sam Allardyce. Just imagine for a moment that Big Sam had not been caught giving some very bad advice over a pint of wine.
Where would we be now? Almost certainly not frustrated after failing to win a seventh major tournament game in four years.
And England’s young people would likely be even more disaffected and downtrodden about their nation than they are today.
Southgate has also helped to reinject optimism in English football. Perhaps his greatest legacy will not be his on-field achievements, but the hope he has instilled in the psyche of England’s youngest fans when it appeared to be almost irrecoverable. Somewhere between a cynic and an ardent pessimist at the best of times, even I believed that England could, if not would, beat France.
I was not alone – most Gen Z-ers I spoke to agreed.
Cast your mind back to June 2016. Had England defeated Iceland, our next opponent would have been eventual beaten finalists France. Do you think anyone on this sceptred isle, outside of players’ friends and family members and the wildly delusional, would have wholeheartedly believed we could win that game?
That’s a hard no.
Whether Southgate stays or goes, there will be an unfamiliar optimism around English football’s tentative next steps. Whoever replaces him, either in the coming weeks or years, will have a moral obligation which may supersede their on-pitch responsibilities.
While older generations may be battle-hardened from the false dawn of the “golden generation” or the Euro 96 semi-final exit, most teens and young adults today only really know on-pitch success under Southgate.
We view the England football teams, both men’s and women’s, as representative of British brilliance when it is in dire short supply.
Southgate has united binary political poles and a disaffected youth to become a desperately needed face of modern Englishness for today’s youth.
And he and his squad have had boundless fun while doing it.
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