The first tournament I remember was Italy 1990. I was eight years old. No interest in sport whatsoever. I still have no interest in sport whatsoever. What I do have an interest in is the England team and that interest started in 1990.
Out of nowhere, I remember football being discussed around the breakfast table. My friend's father was talking about it in the car on the way to school. In class it was the only thing anything spoke of. It was my first experience of being part of a broader national conversation, of being embedded in something larger. Watching those matches, there was a sense that the team represented that broader identity in a specific but indecipherable way - that their behaviour and their performance was symbolic of something larger than themselves, which affected all of us.
Six years later, Gareth Southgate fluffed a penalty. Until that moment, we'd spent the summer of 1996 riding an impossible surge of optimism and momentum. We would watch matches in school. We'd write holds reading 'Honk if you love England' out the back of the school bus. Everyone everywhere seemed to be singing Three Lions. And the lyrics of that song also seemed to affirm a sense of belonging. Years of hurt: it provided this elegiac story of struggle, pain and underdog status. The kind of thing it felt meaningful to be part of.
The momentum broke with that Southgate penalty. Suddenly all hope was lost. And now we were part of those song lyrics. We had written another line of loss to add to a history of woe. It was awful, but there was a trace of something beautiful in it. The sense you have sometimes of enjoying sadness.
The remarkable thing about Southgate is that this moment shaped him but did not define him. He is kind and gentle with his players. He is supportive. He is understanding. He is a million miles away from all the paper-thin bullshit machismo you often see in football - the 'hairdryer' treatment and the angry shouting at the ref and the vein-bulging certainty of the person behind you in the pub, fit to burst with outrage that his tactical genius is not recognised by the players on the screen.
When those players go off the pitch after a loss, or even after a missed penalty, Southgate puts his arm around them, and he whispers in their ear, and you think: thank heavens this man is there, doing those things, and saying this stuff. Thanks heavens we are a better place than we used to be.
That moment in 1996 must have affected him to his core. Of course it did. He had the nation's hopes on his back and he fluffed it. But instead of being defeated by it, he was improved by it. He made himself into a better man. And by virtue of that, a better leader.
There was always this whiff of something unpleasant about England, if we’re honest. There was a kind of constipated anger, a sense of entitlement and barely concealed vitriol. You'd see it in the reaction to Southgate when he missed that penalty. You'd see it in the front page of the Mirror at the time: "Achtung! Surrender - For you Fritz, ze Euro 96 Championship is over!" The occasional brawls and the drunken violence. There was always something a bit shameful about us.
After Brexit and Boris Johnson, that suspicion felt particularly pronounced. I remember having a terrible thought in the run-up to the 2021 Euros: if by some chance we won, it would be treated as validation by Johnson and his press cheerleaders. It was awful. The encroachment of party politics into places it has no right to be. The Brexit poisoning of another wellspring of national unity, taking something which had never previously entailed cultural division and corrupting it.
And then Southgate wrote Dear England. He took on the racism directed at England's players when they took the knee. "For those people that engage in that kind of behaviour," he wrote, "I have some bad news. You’re on the losing side. It’s clear to me that we are heading for a much more tolerant and understanding society, and I know our lads will be a big part of that." He then said something which was really rather profound:
"For many of that younger generation, your notion of Englishness is quite different from my own. I understand that, too. I understand that on this island, we have a desire to protect our values and traditions — as we should — but that shouldn’t come at the expense of introspection and progress."
And with that comment, Southgate brought his decency from the personal sphere to the political. He took part in national storytelling. He spoke clearly to the worst elements of England's support, elements that previous managers would have been too nervous to challenge, and told them that the team did not belong to them.
That article was, in its own way, just as important as Danny Boyle's Olympic Opening Ceremony - the other great moment of sporting national myth-making in living memory. It redefined what the England team stood for and showed a welcoming smile to people who might previously have been reticent about supporting it.
And where are we now? We live in an England where Norman Tebbit's small-minded tests have been stamped into the dirt, where the whole notion of them is a laughing stock. A video emerged during this tournament of Indian and Pakistani cricket supporters all watching football together, every single one of them supporting England. It was testament to the national team Southgate was describing and in part created: one which was open and diverse, not angry and insular.
Southgate has been inundated with abuse and criticism throughout his time in power. What he deserves is celebration. Watching England was once a humiliating experience: nervousness, impotence, frustration, anger, recrimination and entitlement, followed by disappointment. Now it is an entirely different experience. England has grace, not just in its play but in its character. When it is defeated, it still holds its head up high. It does not descend into frustration and belligerence. It's a team you can be proud to support. Sure, we still don't have a trophy. But we now operate confidently at a level that we could once only dream of, back in the days of grinding out group-stage wins and getting to a quarter final at most.
It’s a team that tells us a better story about ourselves. And that is due, in large part, to one man, who fluffed a penalty nearly 30 years ago, and the kind of person he decided to become.
Thank you for writing this. I'm not a football fan, but Gareth Southgate has always struck me as a man of principles and dignity., and this been reinforced by the manner of his stepping down.
I agree totally. I’ll miss Gareth Southgate.