“If you can keep you head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you,” goes the opening line of the Rudyard Kipling poem entitled “If”, before ending with “Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”
Those beautifully written words could be easily applied to Gareth Southgate’s England squad who, in the face of extreme provocation, have largely ignored the insanity around them in order to keep their discipline intact. Indeed, the Three Lions have accumulated just four yellow cards in total, and only eliminated sides Nigeria, Tunisia, Iceland, Poland, Uruguay, Spain and Saudi Arabia had received less.
Harry Kane has been the victim of being wrestled to the ground on so many occasions, yet both the Captain and his team-mates have avoided swamping the referee in protest like so many other sides have done in order to attempt to gain an advantage. These kind of tactics were at their worst during the round of 16 tie with Colombia when referee Mark Geiger appeared to be manhandled more than once by the South Americans as they tried every trick in the book.
“In 1990, Colombia had only one [Carlos] Valderrama, now they have five or six,” lamented former Germany international Lothar Matthaus to TalkSport. “I don’t like this provocation and acting. And with (video assistant referees), I cannot understand why a player would treat another player like this or the spectators.”
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Matthaus went on to criticise Geiger for not being strong enough, as protestations went on too long and at least one potential red card incident was missed. “You have to cut it out. Like yesterday, he forgot to cut out Colombia’s style. He let them do it. We missed three minutes before the (Harry Kane) penalty because they were arguing. Give a yellow card and if it is still going on give a second yellow and a red.
“We want to see football. If people want to see acting they go somewhere else, not the stadium.”
Versus Colombia, the England players on the whole remained perfectly calm and reaped the benefits from it as they had the last laugh with a penalty shoot-out victory. Not even a petition to get the game replayed -- signed by 300,000 Colombians -- could take that away from them and it showed exactly why taking the high road paid off for them.
It had been clear right from the first match that this was to be England’s approach, undoubtedly instigated by Southgate as part of his meticulous mental preparations.
“We also need discipline in the way we work and we need that balance,” revealed the boss to The Mirror before the tournament began. “That is why I have key people around, to be focused across the board to make sure... look, I have been a player and I know that when things get sloppy, standards drop and we have to make sure they do not drop.”
Such abandonment of the “victim mentality” is a sign of genuine strength and is just one part of an overhaul of the way the side thinks. Many of the greatest achievers in sport and indeed in life are those who do not allow complaining or an attitude of “poor me” to stop them reaching their goals and instead simply focus on making their dreams a reality, even in the face of adversity.
We should not be surprised by such an approach, considering that Southgate is the embodiment of this, refusing to simply fade into the background following his missed penalty in Euro ‘96, instead putting himself forward to take on the highest pressure job in English football.
The boss is definitely one of those who could consider himself “a man” according to the lines of Kipling’s famous poem, and he is moulding his young squad into his own fair but deceptively tough image.
