Doubts have been cast over manager Gareth Southgate’s future after England’s defeat to Spain in the Euro 2024 final.
Sir Geoff Hurst has insisted that Gareth Southgate should stay on as England manager if he wants to.
Before the team’s demoralising 2-1 defeat in the Euro 2024 final in Berlin on Sunday, the 53-year-old suggested he would make a decision about his future as soon as the team returned home and has previously suggested the tournament in Germany could be his final game for the national team.
Southgate is England’s most successful men’s manager since Sir Alf Ramsey guided the team to their only major trophy in 1966, reaching two European finals and one World Cup semi-final in his eight years in charge. And Hurst, whose hat-trick against West Germany in the Wembley final 58 years ago remains England’s defining moment in international football, is convinced his team is in top form.
“My view is that the FA would want him to carry on,” Hirst told the Press Association. “Why wouldn’t they, given what he’s achieved?”
“But being a manager is a stressful job. Look at Jurgen Klopp. He was in charge of a great Premier League team but he seemed tired of everything that was happening at the top level. He decided he’d had enough.”
“The national team job takes so much out of you as a person and if he (Southgate) is fit physically I would be 100 per cent backing him to carry on. Why would you want to leave out a player who has been to two Championship finals?”
Hurst was speaking at the Wembley ground of Young’s FC, a community football club set up with National Lottery funding in 2016 to help develop grassroots football in the area.
Since 1994, the Lottery Association has invested more than £440 million into the development of local football at junior level, including £47 million since England’s defeat to Italy in the Euro 2020 final three years ago, and Hurst believes this is vital to sustain the team’s recent progress.
“This is where it all begins,” he said. “There are a lot of players here who have four or five years left before they play for England. Ramin Yamal was 12 when Covid hit (2020).”
“There’s an improvement now in terms of development and getting to the top level. Two Euro finals, one World Cup semi-final. This is the best group of young players we’ve ever had. These young players are phenomenal.”
“We have young people taking part at the highest level and the money the National Lottery has invested in us over the past few years has been incredibly significant.”
Since taking over after England’s disastrous defeat to Iceland at Euro 2016, Southgate has guided them to nine tournament knockout victories, the most in the team’s history, and is the first manager to lead the team to a final on foreign soil.
However, in the run up to the final in Germany he came under criticism from both the media and supporters, accused of playing the team too defensively and struggling tactically to counter the opposing managers.
“It’s terrible,” Hurst said of the defeat in Berlin, “but you can’t look at it as just one football game. You have to look at the progress our national team has made over the last six years, which has been so much better than what came before.”
“In the past there have been problems with team spirit and togetherness – you heard about England players not sitting at the same table, the north-south divide and so on – but that has changed. Gareth Southgate has created great team spirit.”
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