Greatness by Gareth

England manager Gareth Southgate at Euro 2024

After the Euro football championships this year, many England fans were left asking themselves the question: was Gareth Southgate a great manager or not?

The numbers tell a mixed story.

After 102 matches, translating into an 8-year run, the former England defender had achieved an enviable winning percentage. He also took the squad to consecutive Euro championships finals, plus a World Cup semi-finals and quarterfinals.

All accomplishments to be proud of.

But many, including the Financial Times, questioned whether Southgate’s record was padded by having faced easy opponents and whether his lack of silverware was the result of a boring style of play.

The more appropriate question, however, would be: what is greatness, actually?

And while we’re in the musing mood, it is also worthwhile to consider: how do you actually get to ‘great’?

Acclaimed author Jim Collins, author of “Good to Great”

In Silicon Valley, the world-famous author Jim Collins claims to have to uncovered the answer to this last question.

His book “Good to Great” traces the development of several well-known companies, including GE and HP, from being merely “good enough” to “truly iconic.”

His analysis points to one singular conclusion - it is a process and that process is hard.

In other words, anyone looking for overnight success should sign off and check out, because greatness just doesn’t work that way.

Not for companies, not for people and certainly not for sports teams.

One of the greatest examples of said ‘greatness’ is the legacy of John Wooden, the legendary boss of UCLA’s men’s basketball teams in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

Legendary UCLA men’s basketball coach John Wooden

While Wooden led the Bruins to an stunning string of national championships, few people are aware that he coached in Los Angeles for a full 15 years before he ever won a tournament.

Greatness takes time.

So how should we define greatness in the end? Wooden would point to his own formula for success. And that is nice.

But as England manager, Gareth Southgate knew that moral victories and periods of ‘quiet building’ were never going to convince the rabid footballing public in England that he was leading them to the promised land.

Greatness - for better or for worse - comes down to results.

Judging by his decision to step down, we might assume that Southgate does not consider himself to be that great.

Fair enough…

But while fans pine over a lack of trophies, it should be acknowledged that Southgate actually understood the path to greatness very well.

The fact that he did not bring back a title, does not negate his understanding of the route that is required to get to the top.

And that path - in the best English tradition - is marked by blood, toil, sweat and tears.

It always is.

Jude Bellinham’s last-second bicycle kick to help England defeat Slovakia at Euro 2024

Where England fans assumed that a roster full of stars should automatically equate to wins on the pitch, Southgate knew that in major tournaments, victory is decided by extremely small margins and tenacious struggles. He knew that winning those battles of inches or seconds required an enormous amount of work behind the scenes.

It also requires work in the mind as well as with the ball.

So while pundits dissected his formations and his choice of players, Southgate continued to sharpen England’s ability to “win at all costs” and whatever the circumstances.

This required a resignation of previous illusions of greatness. It required an acknowledgement that being England was no guarantee and that England’s football team should never assume that it would in.

While analysts focused on comparing the salaries of England’s starting 11 against those of opponents (a thoroughly useless exercise) or the number of Premier League starts versus the caps of rival teams, Southgate refused to go down the path of empty comparisons.

In his quest for greatness, the England boss grasped the fact that winning is equal parts mastering your own game - and by extension, yourself - and overcoming another team with all its strengths and weaknesses.

Too often, managers, players and fans had taken for granted that against this or that country, England should win handily. National history, strength of domestic leagues and the general talent pool all seemed to confirm their analysis.

And England kept losing when it counted most.

As a first step towards greatness, Southgate dismissed those pretentious, navel-gazing practices and instilled his charges with a singular focus on “being their best” in every single match.

Did he always succeed? No.

But he clearly understood what it took to “get to great.”

In many ways, his challenge mirrors the one that faces Great Britain as a whole.

As Southgate rightly pointed out, a sense of entitlement among players and fans (not to mention the media) does not serve the ultimate end.

As a country, Great Britain enjoyed long periods of superiority and success. But in recent years, too many people in power have forgotten the lessons of the early Victorian era: world domination only comes one step at a time.

The period of time from 1800, when England had lost its American colonies and was forced to regroup until the 1880s when the British Empire stretched around the globe in unrivalled glory, shows what a long slog it is to reach the very top.

The British did it with their typical genteel bravado and while facing less-than-overwhelming enemies. Does the pattern sound familiar?

So Britain become great by accident? Or did they cheat their way to the heights of economic and military power?

No.

What they did do, however, was ‘find a way’ that they could exploit while constantly consolidating and managing what they had already attained. They did it in South Africa, they did it in India and to a certain extent they started to do it in America too.

Behold the boring but highly effective path to greatness.

Downing Street - home of British prime ministers and chancellors of the exchequer

Now as Sir Kier Starmer steps into No. 10 Downing Street, his job is (ostensibly) to make Britain great again.

Of course, he does not openly espouse the slogan so often used by his American antithesis. But after a landslide General Election victory, the message from voters leaves no doubt.

They want change for the better.

The new prime minister will do well to take a page out of Southgate’s playbook: concentrate on early, easy wins - build a solid team, optimize for execution, and stay flexible as you manoeuvre through the intricacies of global politics, always seeking to win (as Sun-Tzu famously admonished) before the battle ever begins.

That would be great.