The European Championship

I'll forever member him as a legend for actually making England good at penalties. That shootout where we beat Colombia and ended like a 20 year curse will forever be burned into my subconscious.

And that's before you consider two finals, semi-final, outplaying France and still losing because Harry skied a penalty, etc. etc.

Think it's easy to forgot how fucking dire England were before Southgate, even with The Golden Generation.

Absolutely. The England job has been a poison chalice ever since El Tel left and the culture, press and fans* around the team was so toxic for years. It can’t be underestimated how much Southgate has done to make England into a team that people can feel good supporting.

And those finals and the semi - he didn’t win but look at Rio and Lampard etc chirping from the sidelines with all their embarrassing early stage exits. Unless you’re Germany or Spain or France or something even consistently going that deep is not something most nations get to do (look at the Dutch).

*

Kyle Walker wasn't even in England's team of the tournament 😂

Walker?

Southgate did a really good job with defending and supporting his players, and dealing with the toxic press and fans. Plus good waistcoats.

#VoteWiegman

I'm sure there was unfair abuse of Southgate, certainly amongst fans, but I find the idea that the media was unfair to him strange. Maybe I just don't read/listen to the problematic outlets.

Most of the criticism I saw, including the high profile stuff from Lineker and co that is often cited was actually quite constructive.

It's their job to explain or critique selection decisions that didn't seem to make much sense. We were bad to watch, and we weren't offering much threat going forward with players playing worse than we know we can. A lot of it was quite constructive offering ideas for what could be done differently.

There was scepticism of his ability to solve the issues he created with his selection and tactics which seems justified. Southgate did solve some (got more out of Foden, brought Mainoo in for Trent) and failed to solve others (just waited and hoped on Shaw, left Kane to toil ineffectively) so criticism and a degree of scepticism wasn't unfair. Ultimately our xG was really poor and on that metric we were very lucky to get to the final.

For once it didn't seem to be the print media or broadcast media making it personal and hounding a man out of his job. There wasn't any wally with the brolly or turnip head stuff was there?

Any abuse was completely unwarranted, but questions about the performances are absolutely valid. When was the last genuinely good 90 minutes England put together? We played well for a half against Netherlands, but even then the only goal we scored in that half was a soft as fuck penalty.

There should be no qualms about playing a more reserved game against the likes of Spain, but when we're still in "Try and make it hard for the other team" mode against some of the group and early knockout opposition we've had during Southgate's years, you're venturing into toxic positivity when trying to shush people not being happy with those performances. Everyone with a pair of functional eyes knows we should be the dominant team in a lot of games we've been fortunate enough to be drawn into.

Yeah of course. The bottler jab was just a bit of a joke. But you've got to reflect back. Euro 2020 was probably the best opportunity to win. I think this tournament was a bit of luck more than anything else. Pretty much jammy to the final compared to what Spain went through.

To be fair, I remember us being knocked out by the likes of Brazil, Argentina, France, Portugal, Germany etc. over the years. Not to diminish Southgate's record, but we should also recognise that he's had some pretty favourable draws.

It's why some of the tournaments we played in the 90's get remembered so fondly. We ultimately came up short but a lot of the games we played were memorable and entertaining. Other than Bellingham and possibly Watkins' goal I'm not going to be able to tell you anything about our Euro 24 ten years from now.

The penalties Vs Switzerland were pretty neat, especially Toney's balls of steel.

Rumour is Tuchel wants it apparently, but dunno if the FA want to stick with English managers still.

He’s a real bridge burner but seems to do well when you let him get his way. Not sure that’s a great balancing act for an international manager who needs access to the squads of 20+ football clubs.

He feels like just the sort of appointment that they’d have gone for 12-15 years ago.

He did pretty well in my opinion but if you’re good enough to get to finals you should be good enough to win one, especially one at home

In terms of progress under his stewardship he made massive strides forward and leaves the national team in a great place

As I’ve said on this thread before though I think the “greatness” of these players is overstated. There’s a lot of good players but none of them would make a best England XI since I started watching football