OLIVER HOLT: Gareth Southgate deserves far better than to be booed by England fans

Like the LIV golfers, who are as wealthy as Croesus and spend most of their time complaining and filing lawsuits, they pity the poor English football fans who have never had it so good in big tournaments, but they lament their fate as if going to the bleak and forgotten hinterland of international football.

Pity them for what Gareth Southgate did to them. Too bad they had to watch England reach the semi-finals and finals of major tournaments instead of the second rounds and quarter-finals that have been the staple of the country for over two decades.

It’s a good thing we don’t often come close to success because when we taste it, we spit in the manager’s face.

Southgate was booed again after Italy’s defeat in Milan 10 days ago and he would have been given another volley had it not been for his side’s thrilling comeback in Monday’s 3-3 draw against Germany at Wembley that marked the retirement of England meant for the World Cup. Cup. He and the team deserve better.

England is now weeks away from leaving for Qatar, but we live in a country of furiously enthusiastic revisionism where reaching the final four in Russia in 2018, with a young side largely stripped of superstars, has been rearranged as a fluke achieved, not because of the excellence of England, but because of the mediocrity of others.

How bleak it is that some are willing to reshape a memory because they have come to dislike the principles a manager stands for. It’s the same with Euro 2020. England reached their first major final since 1966, but that too is now projected as an abject failure as the team fell at the last hurdle to those famous football perfumes, Italy.

England also defeated no one of importance at that tournament. That’s what we’re being told now. Croatia? Well, they weren’t the same team that reached the World Cup final three years earlier, were they? Germany? Yeah, well, it was the worst German team there’s ever been. Denmark? Come on, we always beat Denmark and they didn’t even have Christian Eriksen at that stage of the European Championship.

People deny all kinds of things in this world: there are climate change deniers, flat earth, smoking deniers as a cause of cancer, war deniers, pandemic deniers. Usually people want to deny bad things because denial is easier than being scared or confused.

The strange thing about the English football story for men is that we want to deny something rare that happened to our football team and was actually good. The England team had some success in 2018 and 2021. It made us happy and united for a while.

The team did better than before. But now many people would have us believe that it never happened. In another first for the England men’s football team, we created success deniers.

Imagine having the first manager in two generations to make England play as more than the sum of its parts, imagine the first manager somehow smoothing out the club cliques and making it fun to join again of the national team, imagine having a manager who is finally close to winning a tournament again. And imagine if you hated him for it.

While we’re at it, imagine having a central defender who was one of the mainstays of the runs on those two tournaments and then imagine him booing his name when it’s read out for kick-off for having a bad period. going through with his club.

And then imagine that you are surprised when he plays like a cat on hot stones against Germany last Monday and makes some mistakes. Maybe he’ll play better if his own fans don’t butcher him.

And so, for the first time since the happy break from harmony that overwhelmed us all in 2018, the England men’s football team will travel to a major tournament in a few weeks, after it had become the norm again: led by a manager under pressure, knowing that fans wait, in some cases hoping for him to fail.

The danger of such an atmosphere, of course, is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The players are playing with pressure again because of the antipathy towards them. The shirt is heavy again.

There are legitimate football reasons to criticize Southgate. His team selections seem cautious at times and there are many, myself included, who find it difficult to accept that England, whatever their defensive limitations, cannot find a way to include in the first XI a player as talented as Trent Alexander-Arnold, who was marginalized by the manager.

Others say Southgate has been slow to react to developments in the game and has occasionally been outsmarted by rival managers.

On the other hand, a tactical powerhouse like Fabio Capello had better players than Southgate and England was unable to progress past the second round at the 2010 World Cup. Managing the England team is about a whole collection of attributes, not just one.

There’s no point in pretending that England is in good shape. But we shouldn’t overestimate the importance of the glorified friendly matches that are the Nations League matches either. There are also reasons for optimism, notably the maturing of the impressive Jude Bellingham and the return to club form of Marcus Rashford.

It is the fans’ right to insult and insult the man who has made England a force in international football again.

For the rest of us, it’s our right that tournaments like the 2010 World Cup (Algeria in Cape Town anyone?) deserve better than being booed by his own fans as he leads England to Qatar.

Sport still values ​​money over health

Last weekend, Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was knocked to the ground during his team’s defeat to the Buffalo Bills, with his head bouncing hard off the ground as he fell.

Tagovailoa stood unsteadily, tried to run back to the action, then stumbled again. The Dolphins rated him, brought him back into the game and got him ready to play against the Cincinnati Bengals on Thursday night.

“If Tua takes the field tonight,” neuroscientist Chris Nowinski wrote a few hours before the game, “it’s a huge step backwards for concussion care in the NFL.

“If he has a second concussion that destroys his season or career, everyone involved will be charged and they will have to lose their jobs, including the coaches. We’ve all seen it. Even they should know this isn’t right.’

Tagovailoa played properly against the Bengals. In the second quarter, his head was knocked to the ground on a bag. He appeared to be having some sort of seizure as he lay on the turf and was carried away on a stretcher.

“This is a disaster,” Nowinski wrote. “Pray for Tua. Fire the medical staff and coaches. I predicted this and I hate that I’m right.

“Two concussions in five days can kill someone. This can end careers. How are we so stupid in 2022?’

It’s a good question, but unfortunately it’s one that sports seems to be little closer to the answer. The night before, England women’s football star Beth Mead had suffered a head injury during Arsenal’s Champions League match against Ajax, but Arsenal were unable to bring in a replacement for a concussion as they had already used their regulatory subtitles and UEFA rules would not allow it.

At least Arsenal had the decency and humanity to keep Mead off the pitch. Despite so much more knowledge about the damage brain injury can cause, players like Tagovailoa are still fed to the wolves and the impression may persist that in sports money is still more important than health.