Even for those of us for whom football is something that happens to other people, 2018 was the year we all engaged at some small level with the World Cup. The reason: English football’s charming and mild-mannered manager, Mr Gareth Southgate; The of the waistcoats, family man and kindness thing.
There were two seminal moments in our Southgate love. The first occurred immediately after England’s unexpected victory against Colombia. While his team celebrated its triumph, Southgate consoled an opposition player who was sobbing over a missed penalty. The second took place a few nights later, when his team marked its quarter- final victory over Sweden not with riotous carousing, but by sitting down to break bread with their wives and children. Saint Gareth enthused: ‘We are going to keep that tradition of them coming in and having dinner with us. Those things have played their part.’
If one were looking for evidence of how England’s World Cup approach had changed over the last 12 years, it would be this meal and this statement. Gone was the bravura and gender segregation of Baden-Baden in 2006. Back then, our boys operated under a sex ban, their wives left to their own devices. As for children, no one spared a thought. Southgate, in contrast, encouraged Fabian Delph to return home for the birth of his baby. In doing so, he not only reinvented how we view sporting prowess, but also how we perceive masculinity.
Where once the not-particularly-beautiful game was embodied by David Beckham – a flash individual, like so many of the egomaniacs who have dominated football for 30 years – this summer it was personified by a man whose values of modesty, niceness and hard graft restored us to ourselves.
As one sporting commentator tells me: ‘I don’t know much about Gareth, which is one of the reasons he’s such a decent bloke.’ His habit of cupping his young team members’ faces was beautiful to behold: benevolent, paternal, literally a steadying hand. The team he selected was less bling than the class of 2006, more a group of hard-working young men, some of whom had been forced to fight their way up on loan at unfashionable clubs.
Football’s compassionate new face reflected the spirit of the age. Baden-Baden took place in a period of pre-recessionary bling. In 2018, we found ourselves mired by uncertainty. The #MeToo campaign meant that casual misogyny of the sort that berated WAGs for their partners’ failings was no longer tolerated. Times had changed, ‘Ingerland’ had changed. Cometh the hour, cometh the man.