Adrian Bevington is a former FA director of communications and national team managing director, and was directly involved with the England team at five World Cup finals between 1998 and 2014. Heavily involved in the initial appointment of Gareth Southgate as England Under-21 boss, this is his final exclusive World Cup column for The Northern Echo.
BEFORE the tournament, I predicted that England would probably make it to the quarter-finals before losing to France. In the end, that’s exactly how it panned out, but I still think Gareth Southgate and his players can take an awful lot away from the World Cup.
I think England have cemented their position as a legitimate top-eight team in world football, maybe even top six given their record in the last three tournaments under Gareth. I think if you look at all the other major football nations – Brazil, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal – they’ve all got a huge amount respect for England at the moment, and that hasn’t always been the case in the past.
Listen, we haven’t won anything again, and that can’t be completely glossed over. Gareth will be hurting as much as anyone about the fact that we’ve gone out at the quarter-final stage, and at some stage, he’ll know more than anyone that we need to get over those final hurdles and actually win something. But I still think there’s far more positives than negatives to take away from this World Cup in terms of having a team and a group of players that can continue to grow and improve. The vast majority of this team, certainly in the attacking positions, will be around for at least the next two major tournament cycles, and that’s an exciting prospect.
In terms of Saturday’s game against France, I thought it was a 50-50 game beforehand and I thought it was a 50-50 game on the night. It ebbed and flowed, and I don’t really think either team could have had too many complaints if they’d ended up losing. In the end, it was England who went out, but everything hinged on a couple of key moments for either team, with the penalty miss obviously proving crucial.
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THERE’S been a lot of talk about Gareth’s future in the aftermath of Saturday night, and I’ll say straight away that I want him to stay. I know that’s not a universally popular opinion, and it’s not because I know him, like him and regard him as a friend.
The key thing for me is that I genuinely believe England are continuing to progress under Gareth, and I can see where further progress is possible ahead of the next Euros in Germany in a year-and-a-half’s time.
The players are clearly still massively committed to him, and that’s really important. Often, when a manager has been through three major tournaments, it’s starting to feel a bit tired and the players need a change. That doesn’t seem to be the case here at all – the players have a massive amount of respect for Gareth and the job he’s been doing, and I’m sure he’d continue to get that buy-in if he was see out the remaining two years of his contract.
The FA clearly don’t want to bring that contract to an end – they couldn’t really have been any clearer that they want him to continue – so in the end the decision is going to come down to Gareth and what he wants to do.
After previous tournaments, he’s taken a bit of time to allow the dust to settle, and I think it’s right that he’s doing the same thing here. He’s extremely well suited to international football, and the demands of the England job, and I’m sure he’ll be thinking there’s unfinished business to complete.
That said though, I know that the one England manager who had the biggest impact on Gareth was Terry Venables. He left the England job because he couldn’t reach an agreement with the FA over a contract extension, but he left with the players and fans wanting more. I’m sure Gareth will have that in his mind because he won’t to leave at a point where things have turned sour.
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I FELT for the players and staff on Saturday night and Sunday morning. I’ve been there myself, when an England team has been knocked out of a World Cup, and it’s a weird 24 hours.
In the immediate aftermath of the game, it’s generally just a sense of crushing disappointment. The worst dressing room I’ve ever known was after the defeat to Portugal at the Euros in 2004. Everybody thought we were destined to win that – I still maintain we were the best team at the tournament – and everyone was so low when it came to an end.
You have to be professional though – there’s a lot of post-match media commitments you have to fulfil – and then it can vary when you eventually get back to the hotel. There have been times where I’ve got back and had a few drinks with members of staff, but then there have been others – Germany and South Africa stand out – where I’ve just wanted to head straight up to my room and go to bed.
The emotions are still running so high, so again, I can fully understand why Gareth wants to take his time before making any key decisions. That resonates with me because I can remember travelling back on the bus after the World Cup defeat in Bloemfontein and exchanging messages with Gareth where I was saying, ‘Right, that’s it, that’s me done. I can’t go through all this anymore’. He was telling me to take my time and avoid any kneejerk decisions, and that’s exactly the advice I’d be giving him now.
The day after a World Cup exit, it’s all about getting home. There’ll have been people from the FA’s logistics department in the team hotel while the game was going on, getting things in place in case the worst happened. The players tend to travel light in terms of their personal luggage – they pretty much check in and out of a hotel like anyone else would – but it’s a massive undertaking when it comes to dealing with all the kit and dismantling and packing up everything that’s been at the training ground.
It's a very stressful time, but I saw that Gareth, along with Steve Holland and John McDermott, who is the FA’s technical director and a key part of the backroom team, took time out on Sunday to see the FA staff at the operational hotel. In terms of the logistical operation, our FA is second to none, and I’m sure Gareth will have been hugely appreciative of all the support that the team have had out in Qatar.
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IN terms of the tournament as a whole, while I’ve been watching from afar, I’ve really enjoyed it. Not everyone was behind the idea of a winter World Cup, but as an armchair fan, I’ve loved the constant stream of football while the weather’s been drawing in.
One of the big take-aways for me has definitely been the very different stadium atmospheres that have been evident in Qatar. The sight of 50,000 Argentinian fans cheering on their side against the Netherlands was incredible, and whatever happens in the rest of this week, Morocco have been the story of the tournament. Again, their fans have been amazing, and it’s been great to see parts of the world that are often under-represented right at the heart of this World Cup.
We haven’t been waking up to tales of disorder, violence and anti-social behaviour, and that’s been refreshing, and from the moment Saudi Arabia shocked Argentina, it’s been a World Cup where you couldn’t really predict what was going to happen next.
Obviously, a lot of the issues that dominated the build-up are still there. From a sporting perspective though, I think it’s been a fantastic football tournament.
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