Gareth Southgate: The Truth About Managing England

**Gareth Southgate** (0:02)
We go to a penalty shootout. For us, in that moment, it was about the process that gives us the best percentage chance of winning. A friend of ours had looked after the dog, and he's thrown up all over the bedroom floor. Now, bear in mind, the Spanish manager is currently in Madrid on an open top bus.
Go over to support the fans, they're lobbing beer at me. If the joy's gone, then you're going to find it hard to give that feeling that you need to give the players.

**Damian Penaud** (0:31)
Sir Gareth Southgate managed England for eight years, four tournaments, two finals, and in the course of it became the most successful England manager since 1966 But by the end of his tenure, fans were turning on him in the stadiums, the media had decided that he was the problem. His family stayed at home because he didn't want them in those environments. What Gareth shares in this rich, revealing conversation is something that you rarely hear from a leader at that level. He doesn't offer spin or excuses, but instead an honest account of what it costs to hold the line when the crowd has decided it's already moved on.
He talks about how he managed the voice in his head, why he shared his 1996 penalty miss with his players, and the single moment when he realized that the joy of the job had gone. It was that moment. More than any result is what told him it was time to leave.
This is one of those rich, revealing conversations that just gets better and better every time you come back to it. I'd like to welcome Sir Gareth Southgate to High Performance.

**Gareth Southgate** (1:37)
I'd got to a stage where the FA were very keen for me to stay. They offered me a new contract. I didn't think signing a new contract before the tournament would be a good idea, because I'd seen Fabio Capello do that years earlier, and it created a tension. Well, why is he getting a new contract before the tournament? What should he be after? Actually, I thought it increased the pressure on the team. So, okay, what will be acceptable performance? Well, that's hard to judge, but I knew anything less than winning it. And we're one of the favorites, but even as one of the favorites, there's a 15% chance statistically of winning it.
But if we don't win, we just know the narrative will be a desire for change externally. And then during that tournament, we didn't play as well as we'd have hoped. We couldn't find a rhythm. We had players with injuries. We had some key players that we lost just before the tournament, people like Maguire.
By the way, people who we criticized for years for playing, but have now actually become really important part of how people view the team. So then we're in the early stages of the competition, the crowd are turning in the stadium, and that's now starting to affect the team, I felt. You know, we're back to the tension in an England game. We're back to this sort of sense of entitlement. And, you know, probably once we've placed the veneer, again, we've finished the game. We haven't played well, but we've topped the group. Go over to support the fans. They're lobbing beer at me.
You're kind of thinking, well, probably win or lose, it's probably the right time to go, because further down the line, this is just going to ramp pressure on the team. And also from a personal perspective, the enjoyment from the wins was getting even shorter and shorter. You know, even the semifinal against Holland, I made changes. One sub sets up the other sub to score the winner, and it's about as good as it can get as a coach. We're now in a second final, first final on foreign shores. Celebrate on the pitch, do a ridiculous dad dance on the pitch.
Love watching the players celebrate in the dressing room for five minutes. Then suddenly I thought, no, no, but I lived all this in the last year, I was in three days later, you know, it was carnage. So straight on to the next thing. So even the semi-final win, I probably enjoyed it for eight, nine minutes. And if the joy is gone, then you're going to find it hard to give that feeling that you need to give the players. Probably any leader, it's a long period, eight years, you know, if you look at leaders in anything, I think people get, I've said in the book, incumbency, fatigue, or whatever they call it, you know, they're ready for change. Circumstances around the team don't change. You know, if we had a change of government tomorrow, the new government's got all the problems and issues to deal with.