Southgate threw away the 1-0 against Croatia by going into his shell and reverting to his default which is cautious and unambitious.
England started hot by pressing aggressively, scored, missed the game-killing goal in incredible fashion, then
ran out of energy to press aggressively. Because it was a WC semifinal, and the fact they even had enough left still to press for those 20 minutes was remarkable. At which point you are getting a slow paced game between a team with Brozovic, Modric and Rakitic, vs one with Henderson, Dele and Lingard. England didn't retreat into their shell intentionally. They ran out of options
It's no coincidence that our best points in the second half coincided with us trying to be progressive and our worst coincided with us sitting back.
Your good spells came when Crotia themselves slowed down to breath, that is to say after their equalizer, and then later on when both teams were completely knackered and lost cohesion, leading to a more chaotic game
so we should have been in good shape to maintain the sort of intensity that served us well initially.
Except it was the 6th game in 2 weeks coming in the heeld of a 50/60 games season for those guys. You were not in good shape to mantain high intensity. There's a reason high intensity games are exceedingly rare in these tournaments, often happen in the group stages when they do and by the quarter finals it becomes rare to even see teams play at high intensity in bursts
Just like he did against Italy.
This is the one thing you got right. He went for the same strategy against Italy. This is also the one game that's more open to fair criticism for his management imo
Are you saying that managers have no bearing on the result unless they can step out to play themselves?
On individual games? They rarely do. And when they do it's very noticeable: either the team is hilariously unprepared, or there's an obvious tactical advantage/disadvantage not being exploited/addressed...
Blaming the manager because a defender lost a 1on1 duel to the ball, or another blew a coverage...managers can't control that
You quote Napoleon on good generals Vs lucky generals in southgate's favour before going on to say he's only unsuccessful because he's been unlucky - you say 'the only thing England missed to win stuff is more luck(and possibly Kane not missing crucial chances)'. So which is it?
England haven't been lucky
enough. France got Brazil losing to Belgium of all things, beat Belgium off a set piece goal and them being Belgium, and scored on an own goal and a stupidly lucky penalty to take a 2-1 against a fused Croatia in the final - who were actually outplaying them - while not even looking at Croatia's goal. Iirc they took 1 shot in that half - the penalty. And won the game just like that
Italy barely escape Austria, got the usual Lukaku-in-huge-game bonus, then spent 120 minutes getting beaten from pillar to post by Spain and getting to penalties by miracle. Then scored on England off a set piece on the only chance they had in 120 minutes. Won 2 shootouts.
Argentina? How about the Netherlands game? Brazil again falling in self-inflicted fashion, an easy semifinal, and a then a final they nearly threw away before winning on penalties? Would Scaloni be considered a bad manager had they lost the shootout?
Your argument seems to be predicated upon the fact that we couldn't get a better manager in, which presupposes that Southgate is a top class manager.
It does not. It's predicated on actual performance and results across 3 tournaments. Southgate is likely no more than a decent manager. At international level, that's still a lot, but most importantly, he is clearly doing well with this England team. This isn't Flick - a treble winner at Bayern!! - having Germany look disjointed and miserable and going out in the group stages, ffs
Do you think that Southgate is a top class manager? Would you be happy with him at Madrid?
No and no. Also meaningless. England aren't getting the kind of managers Real Madrid can get anytime soon
