So when I launched my Substack just a few months ago, I talked about managers quite a lot. It was the hot topic back then, because Jürgen Klopp had just announced his impending departure from Liverpool.
Every Reds supporter was naturally shook on the back of the news. Who on earth would replace our messiah? Well, we know the answer to that now. It’s Arne Slot.
Nevertheless, at the time, I pushed one underlying narrative on this Substack, and it was that managers aren’t quite as important as you think. We’re obsessed with the concept of a kingpin in England. On Merseyside, the guy who picks the team is our champion, our overlord.
I wanted to challenge this myth. I stand by everything that I said, but EURO 2024 is really testing my faith and adding necessary context. You’re only as good as your players, unless your players are managed by Gareth Southgate.
For the most part, football is about the players. Who could forget how former Barcelona boss Erneste Valverde summed up the sport in an interview with the Financial Times?
The manager never kicks the ball. He never makes a pass. He never scores a goal, and he never makes a save, either. He talks to his players for 15 minutes either side of two uninterrupted 45-minute halves. And he only gets to substitute five of his 11 players in any given match.
The guy in charge naturally has less of an influence over the result than he does in most other sports. And when it comes to improving on the pitch and acquiring more points, that is achieved primarily through the recruitment of better players.
But, every now and then, we do get reminded of the underlying importance of the manager, especially when a talented group of individuals are struggling to perform to their expected standard.
Your ingredients are everything in football, but if your chef can’t cook, your meal isn’t going to taste very nice. It’s on the chef to take his ingredients and harvest as much as he can from them. Combine the right ones, balance the flavours and create something that works.
Southgate has generally been alright as an international manager, but during this tournament, he’s really struggled. He’s accustomed to dealing with economic ingredients and producing a pretty acceptable but basic meal. Sure, his food is usually edible, but nobody is going to pay much to eat it.
EURO 2024 has witnessed Southgate embrace some more exotic ingredients by attempting to combine the flavours of Phil Foden, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham and Bukayo Saka all at once. It should taste nice, but it just doesn’t.
Southgate has shown that regardless of the individual and his level, the player will always be reliant on how the chef is choosing to cook his meal. Kane, just like Roberto Firmino, needs teammates who will run beyond him, because he won’t threaten in behind defences.
The England captain has spent the past year playing with the likes of Serge Gnabry, Leroy Sané and Kingsley Coman. He scored 36 goals and registered eight assists in 32 Bundesliga appearances last term. Not bad. Son Heung-min made him look pretty good in London, too.
Southgate is making him look really slow at present. And he is. But he looks slower than ever because he’s got less pace than ever surrounding him, hence his perceived lethargy. But instead of recognising that tactical flaw, people are suggesting that substituting Kane is the answer. No, you just need to play with your ingredients to make his qualities taste nicer.
Bellingham, Foden and Saka all seem to want the ball to feet. Right-footed Kieran Trippier wants to cut inside from left-back. The thing is broken, and it’s because the chef doesn’t really know how to use his ingredients. Nobody is complementing each other.
On the eve of every England game, every pundit on the scene seems to suggest that change is coming. This one will be the turning of the page. This one will be when England arrive and score five goals. But no, Southgate has just added a bit more salt, lads. He’s added a bit more Conor Gallagher to the mix, and the food still doesn’t taste very nice.
You see examples of this sort of thing every season. Aaron Wan-Bissaka plays well under Roy Hodgson at Crystal Palace because he’s seeing the ball less and emphasising his defensive qualities.
Under a different manager at Manchester United — and surrounded by different ingredients — he looks like a problem because the Red Devils are expected to generate opportunities to score against disciplined defences. Does Wan-Bissaka offer much within that context? Not really.
Firmino gets deployed on the flanks by Brendan Rodgers and looks very average, before becoming the world’s best false nine under Klopp. Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard couldn’t play together for their national team because they both wanted to run and roam in straight lines. You needed a holding presence behind them, but England just loved 4-4-2, so both of them ended up sitting.
David Beckham was a winger, but he wasn’t that fast, so it wasn’t easy for him to create separation from his opponents out wide. Gary Neville did that for him by overlapping and taking opponents with him, almost as a decoy of sorts. Space opened up for Beckham, and he killed you with the cross that followed.
The players play the sport. They do the scoring, the passing, the saving and the winning. But the chef is still important. It’s on him to recognise what he’s got. It’s on him to combine the right ingredients. And it’s on him to make a delicious meal.
Funnily enough, Carlo Ancelotti is one of the best at doing this, and he’s also renowned for his obsession with food. He loves a good restaurant more than a good game of football.
While he’s never necessarily represented a specific playing style, he absolutely gets it when it comes to designing an optimal system for his players. He always makes his best players look good.
He was presented with a shiny new Bellingham last summer, but rather than seeing a midfielder, he saw a potential answer to Real Madrid losing Karim Benzema without replacing him. The English wonderkid isn’t that fast, but it didn’t matter, because he had Rodrygo and Vinícius Júnior playing either side of him.
He’s got a new ingredient for next season. Quite an expensive one, too, called Kylian Mbappé. For that reason, Bellingham’s role will probably change next term and he might not score as often, but it’s cool, the team dynamic will always be fine under Ancelotti.
Slot has a big summer ahead at Anfield. He proved to be a very capable chef in Rotterdam, and he’ll now benefit from a few valuable months to assess all of his new ingredients in his new kitchen.
Darwin Núñez has loads of potential, but making him taste nice seems to be quite a challenge. He needs specific conditions to thrive. Cody Gakpo seems to get overpowered by his teammates no matter where he plays, so how do you make him more prominent?
Alexander-Arnold is a loud ingredient who needs to be paired with more conservative flavours to be accommodated. And as for Alexis Mac Allister, well, he’s that universal gem who should be fine regardless of what is going on around him.
Upon inspection of every squad in the Premier League, Liverpool’s is arguably the best on paper. It is certainly the deepest. Slot won’t have to work miracles, he just needs to get to grips with his players before designing a system that makes everybody taste good.
It all sounds relatively simple, but cooking can be complex sometimes. Just ask Southgate.
Gareth is out here boiling bananas, and sautéing crisps because I’ve never seen cooking like this! Been following people like Josh, Mo, Andrew, Dave, etc. for quite some time because their approach is grounded in data and player tendency/ability/dynamic. So to see a “professional” get it so wrong is honestly fascinating.
You have 6 UCL winners on the squad and managed to play almost every one of them out of position. It’s just interesting to see how managers’ “expertise” plays out. Hopefully Slot is taking notes. Cheers Josh!
I don't have much faith in Southgate. I don't care much about England (now; I used to) but I keep a close eye on them for work purposes.
Here's the thing, for me: it might feel like longer, but the last World Cup was only about 18 months ago. Half of the 26-man England squad which went to Qatar is not at the Euros this summer. You can argue over the merits of each individual call and the reasons for exclusion vary but ultimately that's a huge turnover for a team which played just 13 matches between finishing the last World Cup and starting at Euro 2024.
This obviously does not excuse Southgate for not getting more from a squad Transfermarkt values at 1.5bn euros, more than any club side in the world. Far from it. He chose the squad, after all. As I wrote elsewhere a week or two back when pondering changes to the XI:
"Southgate could turn to Jarrod Bowen or Eberechi Eze or Anthony Gordon or Ivan Toney or Cole Palmer but none of them have scored a non-penalty goal or set one up for England."
Toney at least has an assist now! Southgate backed himself into a corner by having a squad loaded with players who he doesn't fully trust, and/or have yet to do much of note at international level.
And because football is stupid and their players are talented, England could easily win the Euros. Southgate would get a knighthood when the win will likely have been achieved in spite of him rather than because of his efforts.