Gareth Southgate and the Dismal Death of Football
England has beaten Germany 2–0 giving the now waistcoat-free Gareth Southgate his revenge for the failed penalty in Euro 96 that told the entire nation of England ‘it’s not coming home’. Despite some fans opting to ride the excitement of that victory, it is with a heavy heart that I must declare the same to be true of Euro 2020/21. It is not only the case that football is not coming home but that Southgate’s choice to drop the waistcoat and any form of exciting play from the England team has left the world noticeably out of motion.
In such a cultural discussion one cannot ignore the decision of the England players to make their stand (or rather not) against racism by placing one knee on the grass for a short moment whilst anyone in their right mind is left asking “why?”. Of course racism is an issue to be tackled (no football-themed pun intended) but I find it to be an insult to the greats like Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and Thomas Sowell to believe that a group of 11 men kneeling for a few seconds before playing kick-about dressed in the symbols of a former imperial giant is going to end racism. Furthermore the origin of the act of taking a knee in sport was not taking a knee against racism as a concept, but rather American quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, choosing to kneel during the United States national anthem as a protest against police brutality against African-Americans in the USA. Kaepernick justifiably sees the jingoistic echoes of the national anthem as a masturbatory indulgence of national proportions as the little song attempts to unite all Americans under the banner of police killings, drone strikes, hospital bombings and assassination. The only issue is, the UK’s dreary anthem celebrates an illegitimate authority that takes money from the poor whilst benefitting from its own imperialist past: the dreaded monarchy. Yet the England players stand up, proudly singing God Save The Queen (not the good version by the Sex Pistols either) as the fans wave St. George’s Cross with Three Lions across the chest; the England team have bastardised the message of Kaepernick’s kneel to endear themselves with the woke establishment whilst continuing to bathe in all other forms of bloody nationalism.
Beyond the frankly pathetic act of ‘taking the knee’, Southgate has dealt a blow to the dynamism of the England team with his strategy of conceding nothing and scoring very little, winning games by keeping possession until a chance opens up. This is not entertaining football. I do not watch football to see grown men playing pass in the park, I watch it for the bread and circuses promised by Juvenal and, to respond to Russell Crowe’s Maximus “I am not entertained!”. ITV Sport was blessed with magic Monday with 14 goals across two games, both games seeing a team come back from being 3–1 down and pushing on into extra time; the previous Wednesday our screens were graced with 18 goals in 4 games, however on the tedious Tuesday that England played I was on the edge of my seat, waiting for the dull exchange with Germany to finally end.
“Okay, so what?” come the cries of the Southgate stans who see this formulaic football as a winning tactic. To an extent I agree, conceding no goals (many thanks to the wonderful play by Jordan Pickford) is an excellent way to win a football match and ultimately an excellent way to win a tournament, however this assumes England wins. If England does not win the Euros this year, then Gareth Southgate has failed on both counts — he has taken the excitement out of football in the name of securing a trophy and failed to secure it nonetheless. Perhaps I speak too soon in saying that it’s not coming home and only time will tell, but it is undoubtedly a dreary experience to watch England play. Personally, I would gain significantly more satisfaction from a 7–6 loss than a 1–0 win because I am not on the team, it is their values, salaries and statistics that are on the line for winning, as a consumer of televised football I am here for entertainment. Just imagine if the directors of the next season of Love Island decided to cast a group of Christian fundamentalists who spend their time doing crosswords, there would be none of the entertainment that the mentally disabled usually get from Love Island — the same applies to Southgate’s puritanical approach to football.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. The World Cup 2018 was frantically exciting, a 6–1 victory over Panama shows this and the unbelievably tense semi-final against Croatia may not have been high in goals but was certainly a gripping show. Harry Kane was a star, I distinctly remember a conversation with a taxi driver in Honolulu who kept pronouncing his name ‘Karn-ay’ (the name of the Hawaiian god of the sea) who found his performance exceptional. Kane has so far scored one goal in this tournament and has seemingly been unwilling to show up for the duration of most games, leaving all of the excitement to the last minute arrivals of Jack Grealish who has a remarkable talent for crossing and looking pretty.
So there you have it, Gareth Southgate is guilty of the 1st degree murder of football. Perhaps it is my pre-existing bias, after all his decision to stop wearing waistcoats feels like a personal attack on someone who is seldom seen without one. Even if football does return to its rainy domicile at Wembley this year, it will stumble through the front door and grumble as it drags its way up to bed before finally seizing up from the utter boredom of existence.
Sack Southgate, and whilst you’re at it, get me another Guinness.
