Those who choose to hurl pint pots and abuse at Gareth Southgate should hang their heads in shame.
How about throwing some respect in his direction instead? How about pausing to appreciate he’s part of the reason you’re in Germany in the first place celebrating more success?
Or back home chucking expensive lager in the air, when England get through another round of Euro 2024? Kobbie Mainoo is still just 19, but has already reached as many semi finals of a major tournament with England as Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer did. So has Ivan Toney.
While Harry Kane and Jordan Pickford have made it to three times as many semis. Or if you want to be a little pedantic, three more than Micah Richards. And the reason for this is mainly down to Southgate.
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A bloke who knows his face will never quite fit with some people, no matter how much success he has. But here’s the thing about the good folk from England. For some bizarre reason, despite winning just one trophy in their history, England have an attitude of arrogance of entitlement.
Reaching the latter stages of tournaments is not good enough. We should be winning more. There’s a little reason Brazil have won five World Cups, and Germany won four. Or Spain won back-to-back European Championships, with a World Cup triumph thrown in.
Those teams were the best on the planet at football at the time. They were better at playing the game than England were. Just because England invented football, it doesn’t mean we have the right to win all the time.
And the bottom line is England have had some good teams down the years, but not great ones. Otherwise England would have more to show than a World Cup triumph back in 1966.
Southgate has resembled a man on the edge during Euro 2024. He’s had enough of being ridiculed and disrespected by supporters, pundits and the media.
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And who can blame him? Despite having players like Wayne Rooney, Paul Scholes, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Rio Ferdinand, John Terry and Ashley Cole, England went more than two decades without reaching a semi-final.
We appointed less-than-adequate managers like Kevin Keegan, Steve McClaren, Glenn Hoddle and Roy Hodgson, plus proven winners at club level like Sven-Goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello – but all were serial failures with England on the international stage.
Sam Allardyce lasted one game, before the FA turned to Southgate. And since that moment in 2016, England have reached a World Cup quarter final and semi final, Euros final, and another Euros semi final, which takes place tomorrow against Holland in Dortmund.
Ultimately it’s the hope that kills you. But it’s better to have that genuine hope of being able to lift a trophy in the first place, than never to have it at all. In short, Southgate has taken charge of 100 games as manager, and after Sir And Ramsey, is the most successful one we’ve ever had.
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He’s given a nation a team to be proud of. He’s also given some idiots a side, and memories, they don’t deserve. It’s a fact of life that we tend not to appreciate someone, or some things, until they are gone.
And trust me, win or lose this week in Germany, there will be no better example of this than when Southgate decides to leave his post as England boss.
How dare Emma Raducanu put the spoilers on Andy Murray’s retirement do?
Get invited to his testimonial then decide not to show up? It’s been reported Murray’s mum is less than impressed. That she finds it ‘astonishing’ Raducanu didn’t want to jeopardise her chances of winning the women’s singles title.
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The biggest of her career, for the sake of an exhibition match alongside someone whose been rebuilt more times than the ‘Six Million Dollar Man’. Judy Murray needs to get over herself.
Because Wimbledon no longer revolves around her son. If the tennis shoes were on the other feet, what does she think her beloved would decide to do? Raducanu’s job isn’t to indulge in Murray’s farewell.
Her job is to think of herself. Because, if she wants to get back to the heights of tennis she once scaled, Raducanu has to be selfish. And no-one should grasp that more than Murray and his mother.