After a year of delivering the unexpected, where next for England and Gareth Southgate?

A little bit of boxing has gone into shaping Gareth Southgate’s England team. A bit of rugby. A bit of athletics. Some diving, cycling, swimming and canoeing. Even a bit of curling (you know, that sport where they bowl on ice with brooms?).

Top coaches from each of those fields are on UK Sport’s world class elite coaching programme alongside Southgate, who became the first person in football — and remains the only one — to be selected for the three-year programme.

Southgate attends workshops with them, shares ideas, they tap into each other’s knowledge. It sounds a bit like university, but with million pound salaries and breaks to compete in Olympics and World Cups.

Learning from other sports

He will call upon that network and those resources in the four-month gap he now has before England are in action again, qualifying for Euro 2020, and has been doing so since he started the course with his classmates, at a school whose alumni include Anthony Joshua’s trainer, Rob McCracken, and former England cricket head coach, Andy Flower.

“I have got some opportunities to go and look at other sports; like the rest of the coaching staff we want to keep learning and improving on what we are doing in various areas – how we present to the players or how we deliver set plays, whatever it might be,” Southgate said.

“The beauty of this job is that you do get this period now where to be honest I am going to have a bit of a rest. I did not really achieve that in a couple of weeks over the summer because we were always looking at September. But there is a lot to study and look at and get better because the players will challenge us.

“Their level is high and the level of the coaches they are working with at their clubs is high, so we have to make sure we constantly push our standards and make an environment that allows them to be world class when they come back to it. There are a few internal planning meetings to have. There is the draw at the beginning of December and that then drives next year and everything we do.”

Catching up on his studies – and time to reflect

What with the small matter of five weeks in Russia during the summer, reaching the last four of the World Cup, and the last three months topping a Uefa Nations League group including Spain and Croatia to reach a second semi-final, it has been some 2018. So Southgate has a bit of catching up to do, on his studies for a course he will complete next year.

There is a the small matter of having a bit of a rest, too, which nobody can argue is not well deserved. As soon as England landed back in the country from Russia, Southgate spent half the week at St George’s Park planning for the Nations League matches before taking a short break with his family.

As always with Southgate, the job will never be far from his mind, he will always be thinking about ideas and options and the next young player in the FA system who could make the step up, as they all appear to be doing comfortably each time he calls upon them.

But hopefully he will enjoy a moment to reflect on what he has achieved. The last 12 minutes of England in action this year, when they found the two late goals needed against Croatia to turn relegation from League A into progression to the semi-finals, probably summed up the entire preceding 11 months: delivering the unexpected.

It might not be the World Cup or European Championships, but it has set up a mini tournament to be played at the beginning of next June. A week in Portugal with England’s fans drinking pints of Sagres in temperatures reaching over 30 degrees — what could possibly go wrong?