When Harry met Savvy, the whole Kane v Lineker debate is basically about people who care about England. Kane, Lineker and Southgate all do.
Some quotes from a distinguished former England player after another poor England performance at a European Championship…
Quote 1: “We sack England managers but they can only play with the group (of players) they've got and I think with the group we had this time we were never going to outplay teams no matter what system we played.”
Quote 2: “Don’t you think we overhype the Premier League a bit too much? The reality is the creative players, the goalscorers in the Premier League, are predominantly foreign players.”
Quote 3: “The fundamental skills, and game awareness, have to be embedded in kids. The academies, the level of coaching, has got to be better throughout the game.”
Quote 4: “We looked physically very drained.”
So said Gareth Southgate, the ex-pro pundit in the ITV studio in Warsaw during a discussion about England’s poverty in possession against Italy in bowing out of Euro 2012. The following day, over coffee in Warsaw, Southgate told a couple of us England reporters that the team needed to appoint a psychologist to help them overcome their fear of penalties. This was a good, sensible observation, one that he has followed up on as England manager in three tournaments (although strangely not this one).
During his punditry career, taking in three tournaments and FA Cup and Champions League finals for ITV, Southgate proved a good analyst, calm and precise in his delivery, who could even have gone on to be “ITV’s Gary Lineker” according to senior staff at the broadcasters. Player development at the FA, and management, claimed him but the exchange with Roy Keane and Jamie Carragher at Euro 2012 showed he wasn’t afraid to air his views in a measured way. Southgate made constructive points, especially about the need to develop more technically adept players.