Andy Townsend was waiting in the Wembley players’ lounge for his mate to arrive.
He didn’t actually have an invite but had been commentating on the game and managed to worm his way through the stadium’s vast network of corridors and tunnels to find his way there, wanting to show support to his former Aston Villa team-mate who had just gone through one of the worst experiences a footballer can face.
Successfully inside, Townsend waited with Alison, Gareth Southgate’s wife. Neither of them really knew what to say to one another, let alone what they would say to the devastated England centre-back when he emerged through the entrance.
Then all of a sudden he was there, walking towards them. And Townsend was just about to say, “Don’t worry – better than you have missed ’em” when Liam Gallagher appeared, as if from nowhere.
Clearly, being one of the most famous rock stars on the planet – this being 1996 with Oasis at the height of their stardom – opens doors to some exclusive places and here was the lead singer addressing a defender who had an hour-or-so ago become the country’s current most infamous player after missing a penalty against Germany to eliminate England in the semi-finals of a home European Championship.
Not one ever lost for words, Gallagher said, “Don’t f__king worry about it because at least you had the b______s to go up and take it, those other f__kers, they didn’t want to f__king know.”
It was an apt assessment from a frontman whose band’s song Don’t Look Back In Anger had spent four weeks at No 1 less than three months previously. And at that moment Townsend knew what to say. “Actually, in as many words mate, that’s what I was gonna tell ya,” he said. “What he said is spot on.”
“I never felt anger,” Southgate said, many years later. “I just felt regret, remorse, responsibility. To a small degree that still lives with me, to have failed under pressure under that huge spotlight is hard, professionally, to take.”
Southgate felt he had been personally responsible for ending the wave of good feeling the nation had been riding during that hot summer in 1996. When he returned to the dressing room – a temporary cocoon of privacy and safety from the storm of public fury that was to come – Southgate experienced, for the first time, a feeling that would stay with him probably for ever: that he had let everyone down. Himself, his team-mates, his country.
Everyone had an opinion. Even his mum, Barbara, who said “Why didn’t you just belt it?” when he called her afterwards.
On the team bus carrying the players from Wembley back to the Burnham Beeches Hotel, in Buckinghamshire, Southgate sat despondent. That evening, he had dinner with Stuart Pearce and the left-back, who infamously missed a tournament-ending penalty against Germany at the same stage of Italia ’90, told him what the next few months would look like, advice Southgate would find invaluable.
When he returned home, he could not face anyone but his family and, even then, he struggled to know how to talk to them about what he was going through.
“It was a bleak time,” Southgate wrote last year in Anything Is Possible, his book for young adults and teenagers. He felt anxious and nervous, worried how people would react to him. “Nowadays, players have access to experts who can help them come to terms with difficult experiences like this,” he writes. “Back then I just had to find a way to deal with it myself.”
He constantly presumed everyone was looking at him as he walked down the street and did not want to catch anyone’s eye. It was a fair assumption, given people would stick their head out of van windows and shout abuse at him.
But, in a time before social media and trolling, people also went to the effort of writing to Southgate. He received piles of letters: plenty with harsh criticism, but many containing thanks and positivity.
That was the start of the healing. There were the ones explaining how much they enjoyed England’s run in the tournament, how well they had done, the ones urging him not to blame himself.
“Then there were the notes from incredibly brave individuals which touched me deeply,” he writes. “Some were living with terminal illnesses, or were devoted to caring for family members who relied on them. Despite this, they had taken the time out to write and thank me for playing a role in what had been such an exciting tournament for England. This put everything into perspective. There I was, fretting about missing a penalty, when others had really serious issues to deal with in their lives.”
There was even one from an inmate who blamed Southgate for putting him in prison. The man had been arrested for rioting after England were knocked out. “I’m prepared to take responsibility for a lot of things but not that,” Southgate told the Happy Place podcast.
It was a moment that became intrinsically linked to the identity of the England football team on the world stage – of penalty missers and tournament bottlers – and of Southgate himself. And as evidence of how greatly that experience defines how Southgate sees himself now, a far older and wiser 50-year-old, the whole introduction of his book aimed at inspiring young people is devoted to discussing it.
From placing the ball to walking a few paces back to where his run-up would begin, he didn’t feel in control of his legs and the voice in his head – an inner narrative he believes everyone has and is key to wellbeing – offered up only negativity. What if he sliced the ball? Or didn’t even hit the target? Southgate felt the weight of attention that would never, really, leave him; the burn of a spotlight that would scar.
Southgate has never been much bothered by everything around football – particularly the fame – and maintains as much privacy as the manager of the England national team can.
He experienced similar anxiety when he was sacked by Middlesbrough a few months after they were relegated from the Premier League, in 2009. He remembers going on the school run to drop off his children after it was made public and feeling as though everyone was staring at him.
He felt the sting of public failure, again.
Yet that experience afforded him the time to follow the unexpected, previously unforged path to becoming England manager. Initially, he did things he had never been able to as a football player and manager: he went skiing, took a Christmas holiday, ran a marathon.
He enjoyed punditry and it meant he was then free when a role overseeing England’s youth development opened. That led to becoming manager of England’s Under-21s.
One missed penalty two decades before almost stopped him taking one of the biggest jobs in football. Such was Southgate’s fear of failing in public again he turned down the offer of England manager in 2016, believing the public would not take to him. But his stance softened a year later when the job became available again and, not wanting to spend as much time thinking ‘what if?’ as he had dwelling on one penalty, this time he took it.
He has not looked back – in anger – ever since.
More from i on Euro 2020
- England aren’t ‘rubbish’ and Southgate isn’t a ‘fraud’ – we just need a bit of patience
- What the Premier League could learn from Euro 2020’s controversy-free referees
- The football nomad who became a hero for his role in saving Eriksen’s life
- How Ronaldo’s Coca-Cola stunt could change the face of football sponsorship
- How to watch every Euro 2020 match on TV and online in the UK
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3A5QH82
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