Gareth Southgate deserves his moment in the sun now as England manager - and here's why it's unfair to say he's underachieved, writes RIATH AL-SAMARRAI

Roger Federer knows a bit about winning. It would also seem he knows more than we might have assumed about losing and the small margins between them.

That was the theme of a talk he gave to students the other day at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. He was there to receive an honorary doctorate and for the better part of 25 minutes, Dr Roger stood at a tree stump and shared a few lessons from life and tennis. Syrupy as that might sound, it was a brilliant speech.

But there was a surprise element within it, which came when he was working towards his message about the points that get away.

‘In the 1,526 singles matches I played, I won almost 80 per cent of them,’ he told his audience. ‘What percentage of the points do you think I won in those?’

After a pause he answered his own question: ‘54 per cent.’

Now, that snippet was delivered in a particular context, along the lines of ignoring your setbacks and moving on.

But what it also tells us is the value of big sporting moments. It tells us Federer lost almost half of the points he contested and yet he won 20 Grand Slams, because he raised himself for the moments that mattered. Just as Rafael Nadal won 22 and Novak Djokovic 24 from an eerily identical points ratio — 54 per cent. 

Naturally we might wonder about Andy Murray here and that’s when a penny drops, because he has won 53 per cent of his points on a journey to three Slams. A great career, no doubt about that, but he was a fraction short of greatness in the moments of greatest importance.

All of which makes me think of Gareth Southgate and his moments — the ones that define his tenure as manager of England.

As he steps once more into the grinder, we should relive a few here, because moments fade with time. Moments shrink until detail and perspective are lost, leaving only results. And results are black and white and definitive and immensely reductive all at the same time.

So when folk scream nonsense about Southgate, when they say he has underachieved, when they say he has failed to maximise the players at his disposal, when they imply indifference or even glee to the likelihood of him leaving the post after this German summer, they are looking at three results out of 95 games.

But maybe they, we, should be looking more at moments instead. Because the moments tell different stories. They flesh out rather than minimise. They show Harry Kane going through on Danijel Subasic, 30 minutes on the clock of a World Cup semi-final, July 11, 2018. England 1 Croatia 0. Kane is off centre, Subasic has made himself big, Kane plays to the keeper’s left but not left enough.

The shot is blocked but there’s a loose ball. Another go from a tight angle and Kane hits the post and the rebound doesn’t spin to England. Croatia equalise. Croatia win. Moments.

July 11, 2021. A Euro final, a first on any major stage for England in 55 years. The processes have worked. The selections, culture, vibes and performances have been good.

But Jordan Pickford, who has already saved one penalty and given England the edge in the shootout, is an inch from stopping Leonardo Bonucci’s kick with his left hand. Marcus Rashford then shuffles Gianluigi Donnarumma into going the wrong way, but hits the post. Half a roll to the right and it’s in. Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka miss. England lose again. Moments give and moments take and results distort.

December 10, 2022. 2-1 down. France. A World Cup quarter-final. England are the better team because the processes, selections, culture, performances and vibes have worked again. There’s a penalty and Kane is a great penalty taker. But not this one. It goes a mile over. A big moment to have a bad moment.

I wonder which of those moments trace to Southgate. Where are his fingerprints on the bits that went wrong? Had any of those campaigns ended in the group stages there would have been inquests. Had those key games been lost 3-0, 4-0, there would be scathing criticism. But his teams lost the knife-edge moments against very good or excellent sides.

They have maybe lost because the distribution of English talents has not favoured a particular brand of midfielder in those places and times. Or centre-halves. Or a variety of small moments that Southgate has had a say in, but he has no racket in his hand.

To study what he has brought to England in almost eight years is to see a team and a hope reborn out of the aftermath of abject embarrassment. A time when losing to Iceland was the last straw more than the reality check of a bad friendly.

With the exception of Ben White, players want to be there now. The club cliques have gone. So has the fear, loathing and inhibition, stripped away by a manager who had none of the medals of Sven Goran Eriksson or Fabio Capello, none of the mileage of Roy Hodgson, none of the legacy stardust of Glenn Hoddle and Kevin Keegan, and he has outperformed them all. Same goes for setting his record against Bobby Robson and Terry Venables and anyone else in the line of 12 going back to 1966.

Southgate’s England have gone deep in every tournament. Other than Robson and Venables, his worst finish, a quarter-final, is their best. His best is better than all beyond Sir Alf Ramsey. 

The tale of his reign is that winning has become a realistic expectation, and not merely the demand on radio phone-ins and from those who articulate displeasure with paper airplanes at Wembley. Southgate has built that with intelligence and alchemy.

If his tenure has proven anything it is that gratitude is the flimsiest of concepts in football. Or it is for some, because most would recognise that a generation of great players is no guarantee of anything.

Robson had Peter Shilton, Paul Gascoigne, Bryan Robson, Gary Lineker, Glenn Hoddle, Chris Waddle, Peter Beardsley and John Barnes in his squads, one of which lost all three games at Euro 88.

Venables had David Seaman, Gary Neville, Tony Adams, Stuart Pearce, Gazza, Paul Ince, Alan Shearer and Teddy Sheringham. Hoddle had most of them along with David Beckham, Paul Scholes and a comet named Michael Owen. Sven had a galaxy, Capello had the charm of a wasp, Steve McClaren had a brolly and Roy lost to Iceland when it mattered.

Great players, great and fine managers, and none delivered what seems to have been drawn as the line between success and failure by too many in the determination of Southgate’s legacy to date.

Maybe he will get the trophy that kills off that silliest of debates once and for all. Maybe he will do so with caution and maybe he will spring a surprise by throwing it to the wind. Maybe, just maybe, he knows what he is doing and is the very best man we have seen in the job for an awfully long time. Indisputably, for all the love and a stage show in his honour, that has not been fully appreciated.

I hope that is corrected across the next five weeks, that a guy whose playing career came to be defined by a single moment finally has one that goes his way.

Of course, sport doesn’t always work like that. Not everyone can stand at a tree stump at Dartmouth and give a speech about how it was all OK with the right amount of perseverance.

But in the strange world inhabited by England managers, no one in the past half-century has got so close and none have earned more of a right to that kind of ending.