What problems does Gareth Southgate need to solve for England?

INTERNATIONAL management isn’t like club management. They’re jobs so distinct that there’s almost no correlation between success in one field and the other. It’s not just that club managers can buy and sell players, can mould the squad to their specifications, although that’s obviously part of it. It’s that international management is as much about mood as it is about the details on the pitch. It’s about diplomacy and player development; it’s about PR and establishing principles. But, in the end, it is still a little bit about winning.

Gareth Southgate has performed the ambassadorial side of the job admirably. At a time when English politicians have been behaving scandalously, undoing decades of trust, he has stood as an icon of the good traditions of England: modest, decent, gentlemanly. It was a small gesture, but the way he consoled Carlos Bacca after he had missed his penalty in the World Cup shoot-out was a significant step in the long process of dismantling English football’s well-earned reputation for arrogance and self-regard.

Gareth Southgate is a very decent man pic.twitter.com/meA9CJ3CKA

— Greg Jenner (@greg_jenner) July 4, 2018

He has improved relations with the media. Again, small acts can have significant consequences. Having players take on journalists at darts during the World Cup is such a minor act that it should be inconsequential, but it performed a valuable role in making both sides recognise the humanity of the other, it helped both sides see the other as people doing a job and helped break down the them-and-us dynamic that has so often soured the atmosphere in the past.

But more than that, Southgate has made England interesting. The expansion of the Euros has made qualification even less engaging than it was before. (For those who have not been keeping count and had forgotten England played two qualifiers in March, England are guaranteed a play-off spot by dint of having won their Nations League group. If they beat Bulgaria and Kosovo in the next week, they will require a maximum of three points from their final four games to be assured of qualification). These two games could have been seen as even more of a frustrating interruption to the league season than they already are.

Kyle Walker’s reaction to being left out of the England squad pic.twitter.com/07Gc26k0RZ

— ODDSbible (@ODDSbible) August 29, 2019

There is, though, a sense of England building. By leaving out Kyle Walker to include Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Southgate is continuing the evolution of the squad. It would have been very easy for him to keep picking his World Cup XI, but he has changed the shape and changed the personnel and has promised to continue his evolution towards the Euros.

But in a sense, for all that countless previous England managers have failed at that side of the job, this is the easy bit. Fostering a positive and progressive atmosphere is all very well, but eventually, something needs to be built on the groundwork. And that’s where there is a concern.

To an extent, it’s the nature of international management. For a nation like England that hovers around the top ten in the world, very few games actually matter. A lot of them are spent cuffing aside weaker opposition. A lot of games are spent chugging against opponents who sit deep and have few ambitions beyond frustration. That’s why qualifying records are broadly irrelevant. It just doesn’t matter whether you beat lesser sides 1-0 or 10-0 because it has very little bearing on how a side will play against teams of equal or greater stature.

A lot of young players in the #England squad, great for the future of the game and a very strong looking future. Can't wait to see how they get on at the highest level pic.twitter.com/cKqY9k0FAO

— The Prem Rant (@ThePremRant) August 29, 2019

And it’s in those games England have been found wanting. Even in friendlies against big sides, England have had a tendency to wilt late on, have developed a habit of conceding late goals. The Nations League can be excused to an extent given how many players had played in the Champions League final, but those tactical doubts were obvious at the World Cup. England were dominating Colombia before dropping back, inviting pressure and conceding an equaliser. Against Croatia in the semi-final, Southgate was unable to come up with a way to prevent Croatia’s full-backs pushing on and stretching the midfield to breaking point (could Raheem Sterling not simply have been deployed wide and the shapeshifted to 5-4-1 from 5-3-2?).

But those are questions that cannot really be answered until England face decent opposition in a high-pressured game. They could lose to Bulgaria and Kosovo in the next week and still qualify with relative ease. For now, it’s all about the foundations and the mood – and Southgate is good at that.