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Post by MrP on Jul 16, 2024 22:23:58 GMT 1
Not aging well…. We’ll win on penalties Vs Spain I wish you’d been right Andy P. Ah well. However By the laws of wishy thinking though, we’re nailed in to win the league now, right? Well that aged well! I genuinely thought we’d sneak it on pens after the fairly unspectacular progress to the final. On the day, Spain were the better team and deserved their victory although i thought we had opportunities not least after the substitutions and goal when Spain actually gave the ball to us for 10mins or so but then we settled back into defensive mode playing for extra time etc. I agree with Mrs Ann re Kane. In some ways Bowser has a a similar decision with the squad he is assembling which appears very strong for this level and has more than 11 players expecting to play week in and week out. Will Bowser be stronger than Gareth in picking a team, rather than the best 11 players. As for Southgate, it’s too early to tell how good he was. I confess that I was never a big fan and was (as an opposition fan) delighted when talk emerged of him taking over at United! Still ETH remain which is great news. I think he has done very well in terms of building a team that clearly plays for him and for the results. His set-up was too defensive for me, particularly given the talents available. I felt that against Spain and more so the defeats Vs Italy and France, there were opportunities to attack and take the game but being a defender he was too cautious. And so we wait to see what the next person does. If they go to win, will that be Gareths legacy or Gareths failings. If they do worse with the current squad then perhaps we will look back as others have said today as this being a golden time… |
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Post by danmartin on Jul 17, 2024 9:34:04 GMT 1
I think Southgate has highlighted the differences between club and international management.
International sides very seldom have the "best" managers in charge of them. Sometimes they appoint a big name, but it doesn't generally guarantee success. I also can't think of any examples off the top of my head of a successful international manager going on to a good career (there might be some, but I can't think of any right now).
Gareth Southgate is not a better manager than Fabio Capello or Sven Goran Eriksen. Looking at their Middlesbrough records, he's not even a better manager than Steve McClaren (though he did have a much reduced budget to be fair). However, he's done a vastly better job with England than any of the above managed, or indeed anyone else evern, except Alf Ramsey.
As a club manager, you need to succeed over a very large number of games, to work with players every single day, and to build a squad that can deliver your objectives. As an international manager, you need to win the vast majority of a very few games, spread out over a long period of time. You need to pull together 25 odd individuals who spend a lot of the season opposing each other and meld them into a happy, cohesive bunch. You need to deal with the scrutiny of an entire nation once every 2 years, rather than the constant low-level attention of club management.
So much of the good things Southgate has done, such as building a positive, welcoming environment for the players, looking at how international sides succeed, practicing and planning for penalties, seem blindingly obvious, but none of his illustrious predecessors did them. This is because they likely didn't need to at their club sides. They had succeeded in a different environment by doing different things.
I don't think Southgate is a great manager, but he is a great international manager. Margins between success and failure are fine in international football, with so few games, most of them crucial, but he created a positive, enjoyable England team that the nation could once again love. That, to my mind, is the job of the international manager.
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Post by bigj on Jul 17, 2024 13:39:20 GMT 1
Steve McLaren was an idiot!
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