World Cup 2018: How wine and indiscretion in a pub led to Gareth Southgate's appointment as England manager

For long-suffering fans of the English national team, Gareth Southgate can appear like a messianic figure in his sartorial waistcoat, leading a band of young men to a place no fan of this particular vintage can remember.

Southgate’s team has done remarkably well so far, even though sticklers will argue that they still haven’t faced a ‘big team’ and got a lucky draw and not scored enough goals from open play.  But none of that is going to distract the long-suffering English fan, who wouldn’t care if the goals came from set-pieces or off the referee’s forehead as long as England continue their run.

However, what’s more remarkable is the fact that Southgate wouldn't even be here if it wasn’t for an unsavoury experience in a gastropub in Manchester involving former English manager Sam Allardyce.

After Roy Hodgson’s English team was shamed in France by a plucky Iceland side in Euro 2016, the FA picked Sam Allardyce to lead the charge.

Nicknamed Big Sam by the English press – the battle-hardened relegation specialist was famously fired by Indian poultry group Venky’s when they took over Blackburn Rovers. Big Sam has spent the better part of his career helping unfancied teams stave off relegation with a mix of brawn, defensive stability and long hoofs.

Having spent most of his career giving a hard-nose to more fanciful teams and managers like Arsene Wenger, Rafael Benitez and Jose Mourinho, Big Sam had always argued he did the best with the hand he was dealt. He has often argued that if he did get to manage a proper top-of-the-table team, he’d get them playing beautiful football going as far as to say that it was his ‘Englishness’ which held him back.

He had famously said in 2012, while comparing his West Ham team to Robert Mancini’s Manchester City: ‘I won’t ever be going to a top-four club because I’m not called Allardici, just Allardyce.”

 (AFP)

Allardyce, even in a pre-Brexit Britain, staunchly believed that foreign managers were taking away jobs from hard-working Englishmen. That all he needed was one shot to prove his worth.

So, when he finally got the reins to manage England, after the epic capitulation against Iceland in Euro 2016, it was a chance for Big Sam to show the footballing world and all his naysayers what he could do with a bunch of talented individuals.

Sadly, he lasted one game, the first World Cup qualifier against Slovakia where Adam Llana scored an injury-time winner. And Allardyce can’t really blame anyone for his own fate, as he was caught on camera, in a Manchester pub, in an extremely compromising position – badmouthing former manager Roy Hodgson, former assistant coach Gary Neville and giving advice on how to circumvent his own organisation – the FA’s – rules on player transfers.

A sting conducted by The Telegraph caught England’s newly-minted head coach telling people he thought were businessmen from the Far East, while negotiating a £400,000 ‘speaking’ deal, on how to get past the Premier League’s third-party transfer rules.

And he did so on camera, in the most English way ever, in a pub chugging white wine from a pint!

On camera, he even agreed to travel to Singapore and Hong Kong as an ambassador and give talks to Middle-East ‘businessmen’.

Unknown to Allardyce, the ‘businessmen’ were really undercover reporters who had been conduction a 10-month Telegraph investigation on bribery and corruption in British football.

To put it in perspective, the England FA’s most important employee was telling fictitious businessmen how to get past its own stringent rules, the footballing equivalent of the Pope being caught on camera willing to show a shortcut to heaven for a few extra quid.

With the world watching, an embarrassed FA pulled the plug on Sam Allardyce – who’d been involved in a 2006 corruption investigation as well – and the big man left on terms described as a mutual agreement.

Embarrassed by the Sam Allardyce dalliance, England picked their U-21 manager Gareth Southgate to lead the squad. Southgate was a greenhorn compared to his predecessors.

Quite ironically, while Southgate was leading his squad to a 6-1 victory against Panama, Big Sam was pictured eating a Big Mac in a pub, probably wondering what could've been. 

Big Sam watching England today with. Big Mac  pic.twitter.com/S9l1M41cbp

— Football Away Days (@FBAwayDays) June 24, 2018

His only experience in the Premier League came with Middlesbrough in 2006, his appointment the subject of controversy because he didn’t have the required coaching qualification – the UEFA Pro Licence.

His appointment was billed as a thoroughly-uninspired choice, more like handing over the factory key to the watchman rather than find a new manager.

Aeons of space were wasted, and columns were written on why no one should expect anything from Southgate’s England.

His appointment was seen as proof that the English football team had hit its nadir and no international manager of worth would be willing to sip from this poisoned chalice.

Yet, two years down the line, Southgate is on the cusp of going past all his predecessors. He has taken a band of young men without any baggage and somehow moulded them into a winning outfit. Pretty, no? Utilitarian, certainly.

He has done so by doing it, as Sinatra sang, his own way.

He has chosen players based on their game, not their name. He hasn’t been afraid to leave big players out, irrespective of the clubs they represent, taking the harsh call not to take Jack Wilshere or Joe Hart.

(AFP)

He has given youth a chance, played with a clear formation – 3-5-2 – and for the first time in decades, the English team actually look like they know what they are doing on the field. 

 As a young man at Crystal Palace, Southgate had been told that he was too nice for football, a piece of advice that jars to this day and yet helped him make his bones.

His manager Alan Smith at Crystal Palace had told a 17-year-old Gareth Southgate: “I admit if you were my son, I’d be proud of you. As a travel agent or an estate agent, you’d be perfect. As a footballer, no f_______ chance.”

As he stands on the precipice of greatness, on the verge of taking the English team where no manager has done before, Southgate will probably allow himself a quiet chuckle to remember how wine in a pint and someone’s indiscretion brought him here. If Southgate does lead England to greatness, we will remember, time and again, that nice guys don’t always finish last.