When did you notice they stopped taking the knee? Did you even notice? Don’t worry, we’ll get back to that.
Gareth Southgate’s final attempt to coach the England men’s team to a tournament victory took on Sisyphean proportions after losing the final of Euro 2024 to Spain. Yet what marked his era as manager reached far beyond the pitch. A tale of a team trying to influence and ride the wave of a country that was changing – but not always changing fast enough.
Popular consensus paints Southgate’s greatest achievement as changing the experience of playing for England. What had previously brought little more than suffocating angst and pressure became one to be relished and enjoyed. Friendly darts contests with the press, players being encouraged to be candid with them, they found wearing the shirt a more pleasant experience, avatars of contemporary England.
Euro 2020 (played in 2021) was England’s definitive men’s tournament of this era. The summer of Southgate and Sweet Caroline.
Three years on, it’s difficult to recollect just how dizzying that summer was. Every aspect of life was framed through the prism of the Covid-19 pandemic (which isn’t over) and resultant lockdowns. Emotions were felt more acutely. Many of us were emotionally raw, and were of no mind to bite our tongues on the issues affecting our individual and collective lives.
This feeling wasn’t exempt from the most financially secure among us. During the plans for the return from its pandemic hiatus, the “captains” of the 20 Premier League sides – led by Troy Deeney – requested that every game would be preceded by all involved taking a knee, a anti-racist gesture inspired by Colin Kaepernick – who paid for his activism with his NFL career.
Once anti-racism ran into fans, it ran into the culture of English football. Maybe even the culture of England. It’s been taken as read that the team has long represented a specific perspective of the country. An unyielding nationalistic view, forcing all who want to be a fan into a narrow corridor of jingoism and right-wing animus.
Describing this mindset, former journalist Paul McCarthy once said, “A lot of the English fans were fuelled by right-wing bigotry. They were driven by a xenophobia and a hatred of anything non-English.” The message being that a handful of non-white players were acceptable, but football is a white cultural product.
Pre-Euro 2020, the players taking the knee elicited some audible boos from fans. Before the competition even began, the team were drawn into a scabrous media storm, with the Conservative government of the day cynically joining in.
Knowing this risked derailing England’s Euros, Southgate was unwavering. But bellicosity isn’t part of his makeup. Rather than conduct himself with defiance, he tried persuasion. Writing an open letter, he supported his players anti-racist stance, while attempting to fuse the older and newer perspectives of the nation.
Southgate’s language in his early years in charge was instructive, speaking about wanting to bring a fractured country together. England made that Euros final, and his popularity skyrocketed, taking on leadership qualities in a country shorn of leaders. The tournament suddenly felt mission oriented around something grander. The task wasn’t just to win a first men’s trophy in decades, but attempting what Nelson Mandela tried with South African rugby union in 1995 – changing the soul of the national sport. Maybe even saving it? Lofty and idealistic, certainly, but think back to the beginning of this era, and the 2018 World Cup win over Colombia: “Maybe times are changing!” exclaimed the BBC’s Guy Mowbray, “this team is changing things!” You could be forgiven for thinking he was talking about more than a game of football.
But the unspoken aspect of sport intersecting with politics, is that the message must be twinned with winning. Making the final meant the team’s Black players were used as proof of the benefits of racial diversity. Losing that final to Italy – with three of those players failing to score in the decisive penalty shoot-out – led to them receiving racist invective.
This was a year after the U.K. had anti-racist protests, sparked by the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. A 12 months that showed anti-racists had had enough. And that racists hadn’t.
This is part of a continuum when considering Black footballers and the England shirt. After John Barnes scored one of England’s greatest ever goals against Brazil in 1984, contributing to a 2-0 victory, England fans declared that they only won 1-0, as “a n**ger’s goal doesn’t count.” This history travels through the Football Association being rumoured to request then-manager Graham Taylor in the 1990’s to limit the amount of Black players he selected, to the hounding of Raheem Sterling, Eniola Aluko and Drew Spence’s treatment when part of the England women’s team, to Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka being called “Black ****” on social media.
The racism long apparent in English football is also evidenced in a 1998 edition of The London Programme. White supporters attempted to excuse racist abuse of players with statements such as…
“If a black player, for instance, makes a mistake and you say, ‘You black b**tard. I don’t think it’s racism when it’s said like that. I think it’s just a term of endearment, really.”
“Just depends what you define racism. If you mean like little comments like, ‘You black c***, and things like that, that don’t mean nothing. It’s just like off the tip of your tongue.”
This mindset felt so entrenched that one could presuppose it was the only way to be an England fan. In a Euros qualifier in 2003 against Turkey, fans could be heard chanting, “I’d rather be a p*ki than a Turk!”
I’d proffer that some of the later criticisms of Southgate had this residual atavism at their heart, with their chief bugbear being that he wasn’t a “Proper Football Man”. “Man” is the key word here (the English is silent). Football is a huge area in how boys are taught to be men, and this manhood isn’t always healthy.
To them, Southgate was indecisive, polite, cared about others feelings, had a middle-class accent, and didn’t carry himself like he was ready to punch someone – ostensibly feminine qualities. In short, he was weak, soft, a goody two-shoes, probably even a vegan who recycled.
Southgate scepticism became commonplace online post-2021. While no-one’s idea of a super-coach, something else underpinned these rebukes. He became constantly derided as “Gareth Wokegate”.
So I’ll ask again: when did you notice that they stopped taking the knee?
Journalist Jonathan Liew details that late-era Southgate, “resiled from the social causes and advocacy he pursued in the run up to Euro 2020. He had precious little to say on the human rights situation ahead of the Qatar World Cup. When Jordan Henderson, one of his most senior players, moved to the Saudi Pro League, he visibly squirmed at questions over whether his continued selection was an affront to LGBT fans. Earlier this year he opened the door to a recall for Mason Greenwood… who had charges of domestic violence and sexual assault against him dropped but remains deeply unpopular with many supporters.”
With little fanfare, the taking of the knee quietly stopped happening. We should also mention that despite featuring significantly fewer players of colour, both the England women’s team and the Women’s Super League continue to display this gesture before matches.
What prompted the change? Did political debates around the team become tiresome? Did Southgate feel it was having a negative effect on his players? Did he simply get tired of prosecuting a culture war he never wanted a part of? The day after the loss to Italy, Southgate spoke of feeling like his heart had been ripped out. He called the racist abuse of his Black players “unforgiveable”.
I’ve long suspected the emotional intensity of Euro 2020, and the nature of the defeat in the final, had a profound effect on Southgate. The nation wasn’t united around creditably losing on penalties (few things are more stereotypically English), but split along a majority who saw a multiracial group of men who represented us, and a minority who thought those Black c**** ruined it all.
How can a football manager reconcile a nation state when it can’t even be agreed who counts as part of the nation? I’ve wondered if those Euros left Southgate so exhausted, with neither of his goals achieved (winning a trophy or uniting England), that he vowed never again. And while not easy, winning a trophy is orders of magnitude easier than getting a whole country pointing in one direction.
Note Southgate’s words towards the end of Euro 2024, “We live in what’s been an angry country… Hopefully we can bring some temporary happiness. But we’re not going to change our country either.” Probably more realistic, but the febrile optimism of 2021 was gone.
Referring to the psyche Southgate tried to change, journalist Rory Smith opined, “[England’s songs are] almost acts of aggression. They’re not sung with pride. They’re sung with hostility, and defiance, and a bit of rage… none of it is celebratory.”
There’s a reason why England is among the most disliked of national teams. Beyond its colonial history, its fanbase has been riddled with hubris, entitlement and hooliganism. English fans were once the bane of countries that hosted tournaments for years, annexing town squares before vandalising them.
Such poison may not yet be excised from the cultural bloodstream, but it was diluted during Southgate’s tenure. One reason being we got to feel something we’ve seldom felt as England fans; joy. For a good deal of the past 8 years, supporting England has been laced with joy. Not just for us, but also the players. This was critical as the squad’s collectivism meant they didn’t come apart under external pressure.
Being a Black England player has often been difficult, but Southgate arguably made it an arena where they could feel at ease for the first time. No longer were they just tolerated, but had their personhood fully respected.
This was illustrated when England travelled to Hungary in 2021. The Black players received racist abuse throughout, and when Sterling scored, the crowd threw cups at him. His teammates – reflexively – formed a protective circle around Sterling, while Declan Rice and Jack Grealish mocked the racist fans, picking up the thrown cups and pretending to drink from them.
Why this signified a sea change is that the message to Black players previously was to get on with playing, ignore the racists, and not to “let them win”. But this iteration of England declared that racism was something they wouldn’t (literally) stand for, and that the appropriate response would be led by their Black players.
The connotations of the Southgate era was that following this team didn’t have to be accompanied by a confrontational, spittle-flecked view of others. That supporting – maybe even loving – the team didn’t mean you had to detest everyone else.
There’s no doubt he became a polarising figure, inspiring as much disdain as admiration, but while never leading England to a trophy, Southgate’s results were better than all male predecessors not named Sir Alf Ramsay. He also helped give this team to swathes of its public that had been long turned off by them. They were a genuine model for how people – from all around England – can work together for a bigger cause.
The idea that English football is now a beacon of progressivism would be an exaggeration. It doesn’t feel an accident that, while genuine, its solidarity with Black players coincided with the country producing so many good ones. There’s still a total absence of England’s Asian diaspora. Support for LGBTQ+ people felt less fervent, and we saw zero acknowledgement of the link between England men’s defeats and violence against women.
Yet even without trophies, this was a relative golden age. It showed that the England team doesn’t have to be an envoy of right-leaning nationalism. However, these changes may not be permanent. A new manager will have new ideas. It’s not difficult to see a bad run of results blamed on “wokeness”, that England aren’t an activist group and need to “stick to football”.
A real marker of progress is when the battle is no longer between white England and Black England, but between white England alone. As in the whites who are anti-racist, and the whites who… well, just look at the news in the past week.
The England men’s team carries immense cultural import; thus drawn into the societal tug-of-war that’s been part of the body politic for the past few years. Even if Southgate eventually recused himself from the fight, his earlier battles were not for naught. Smith described England as, “the country that racially abused three Black players when they missed penalties on the final day of the Euros, but it is also the country that showered all three with love and support in response… And, no matter how tempting it is to think otherwise, neither of those countries can lay exclusive claim to being the country.”
The battle for the soul of the game hasn’t been won. But it’s also not lost. Maybe it’ll be decided on a penalty shoot-out. Which would be fitting as the other big change Southgate, and his Black players, brought about was that penalties became something England can win.
