There was a British television programme in the 1980s called “Do They Mean Us?” that was hosted by a well-known newspaper journalist called Derek Jameson.
If you are younger than 50, or not from the UK, bear with me, there is a point coming.
The premise of the show was that Jameson, an abrasive Londoner, would present the audience with a series of reports about Britain by foreign media outlets.
Sometimes these pieces of video were horribly cliched, or laughably inaccurate, and the joke was on them. But other times they were uncomfortably perceptive and the joke was on us. Either way, Jameson’s catchphrase was: “Do they mean us? They surely do!”
Jameson would have had a field day with the overseas coverage England manager Gareth Southgate has received this week (see, I told you there was point). So, without further ado, let us take a leaf from his book and dive into Southgate’s mentions.
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We will start with the nation that has provided the stage for this shi… no, this is not a piece about English takes on England.
The Germans have been wonderful hosts for this tournament but they have been keeping receipts.
For example, there are a few streets near Frankfurt’s main train station where… how shall we put this? Anything goes, including fairly open drug use. One of Britain’s newspapers dubbed the area “Zombieland”. Accurate but not very nice.
“Now we understand what the Daily Mail meant when it described Frankfurt as Zombieland: the bloodless playing style of the English,” responded German football outlet 11Freunde, with interest.
A more generous critique — but possibly more alarming, given his knowledge of English football — came from Per Mertesacker, the former Arsenal centre-back and the club’s current academy manager who is working for German broadcaster ZDF during Euro 2024.
“A very disappointing England performance, from A to Z,” was his take after England’s 1-1 draw with Denmark. “You don’t see anything of the stuff that many of these players do every week under (Arsenal manager Mikel) Arteta or (Manchester City’s Pep) Guardiola. They also look shattered.”
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Mertesacker’s ex-Germany team-mate and co-pundit Christoph Kramer was even less impressed.
“The squad is worth one and a half billion euros,” the Borussia Monchengladbach midfielder said. “I always find it a bit disappointing that they play like that — it’s been like that for six or seven years. I watch England every time and I don’t know what they want to do.
“With the squad I have, I expect them to run over (Denmark). (That display) can’t be the aim, with all due respect.”
All due respect? Southgate has been England manager for eight years, so maybe Kramer thinks it all went south after the 2018 World Cup qualifying campaign.
Kramer was not finished, though.
“If you have this much quality available, you cannot play like Union Berlin!” he said, perhaps being a little unfair to Union Berlin, who won their final game of the season last month to finish one place above the Bundesliga relegation zone. “I feel sorry for the players, they’ll be angry because they have to play such football.”
11Freunde was particularly confused by Southgate’s directions to England’s leading man.
“Jude Bellingham is usually so elegant and cool, I often don’t know if he’s playing football at all or if the game is just the film set of the new James Bond,” it wrote in its account of the Danish debacle.
Jude Bellingham has looked a pale imitation of his best (Alex Grimm/Getty Images)
“Today, however, no ideas, no dominance, neither shaken nor stirred. Bellingham, Jude Bellingham, with the licence to dive.
“He asks Southgate on the sideline: ‘Do you expect me to play the game?’. Southgate: ‘No, Mr Bellingham, I expect you to leave the tournament!”
Let’s follow England’s performances and head south.
“Bellingham shines in a dark England,” was Spanish newspaper El Pais’ headline after the 1-0 win against Serbia, which seems a long, long time ago.
“England, probably the most gifted squad in Europe, dedicated the rest of the evening to sitting back in their own half, giving the ball to (goalkeeper Jordan) Pickford to kick it long to see if (Harry) Kane or Bellingham could hold it.”
(Narrator: they couldn’t)
El Confidencial, confusingly, was more open in its assessment.
“You have Kane, Saka, Bellingham, (Phil) Foden, (Trent) Alexander-Arnold, (Jarrod) Bowen, (Declan) Rice and (Cole) Palmer and your offensive production is the same as Scotland’s,” it said. Ouch.
“Southgate, what a talent-wasting machine.”
And that was before the state of the Denmark performance.
“England smell, like they’re rotten,” was Marca’s Shakespearean take.
“Southgate prevents England, once again, from being their best,” was Mundo Deportivo’s more personal barb.
You might think the Italians, who hold the copyright on stinking the joint out all the way to glory, would be more understanding about what Southgate is trying to do.
You would be wrong, though.
During England’s opener against Serbia, former Swindon Town manager Paolo Di Canio got very agitated on Italian television. Unlike him, I know.
In a laundry list of complaints, he thought England were hoofing it long (against Serbia!), the team lacked a motivator in the dugout (can’t imagine who he had in mind), Southgate was like a Ron Atkinson or Harry Redknapp in that he gives his players the team and tells them to work it out and the goal came from a deflected cross (and was therefore lucky).
Paolo Di Canio – not a Southgate fan (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
He did caveat all that by adding that England might still win the final 3-0. As an Italian, he has seen that movie before.
But having tried to explain to the viewing public what was going on during England’s first game, Di Canio had very little interest in the sequels. During England’s third game against Slovenia, the former Charlton Athletic forward pretended to fall asleep.
The headline on the report of that match in Italy’s leading sports newspaper, Gazzetta dello Sport, probably put it best: “Where is England?”
Overall, the commentary on the drab fare served up by Southgate has been a little more circumspect across the Channel.
This is not because they like what they are seeing, it is because it is very familiar. Southgate is a devoted disciple of Didier Deschamps when it comes to tournament football, so the French probably feel partly responsible.
That said, French sports bible L’Equipe did open its report of the dog’s dinner against Denmark with a wonderful opening paragraph.
“There is, in Lucky Luke (a Belgian cartoon about a gunslinger in America’s Wild West), this recurring character of the undertaker,” it wrote. “Recognisable by his greyish complexion, oblong face and black costume, he regularly comes to take the hero’s measurements, when the latter seems destined to die.
“Yesterday, during the post-match media conference, we almost expected to see him appear from the bowels of the stadium and unroll his tape measure against Gareth Southgate.”
Slovenia
As someone who was present at that event, the funereal metaphor was apt.
Not everyone was grieving, though. Whether this counts or not as the consensus view in Slovenia, there is a widely-shared video on social media of a Slovenian fan singing at a tram stop after Tuesday’s match in Cologne.
“Southgate, Southgate, Southgate, thank you for the point, thank you for the point, thank you for the point.”
Netherlands
For much of Wednesday, it looked like the reward for England’s group-stage efforts would be a last-16 game against the Dutch, which would have been fun as they have had a fair bit to say about Southgate’s sorrows.
Dutch newspaper Het Parool’s view after the draw against Denmark was that England’s status as a potential winner of Euro 2024 was looking shaky.
“The football is predictable, often incoherent and by no means convincing,” it wrote, perhaps contradicting itself on the predictable/incoherent bit… unless it thinks England are predictably incoherent, of course.
An expert on calculated chaos, Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag immediately spotted what was going on during the Serbia game.
“It’s the vision of the manager,” Ten Hag said whilst on pundit duty for Dutch broadcaster NOS. “England will take a 1-0 lead, then (Southgate) decides to start gambling with making his team, making them compact and relying on moments for the remaining minutes of the game.”
England fans would probably take “moments” right now.
There have been some surprisingly bad pieces of play, Marco, but we take your point.
Marco van Basten has been critical of Southgate’s style (Tiziana Fabi/AFP via Getty Images)
Serbia
We should probably caveat the following with a hint of sour grapes, as England have been bad but they did beat his team, but Serbia captain Dusan Tadic has been underwhelmed.
“I don’t want to sound disrespectful, because I really respect England, but they are the biggest disappointment in our group,” the former Southampton player said, entirely reasonably about a team he picked to win the tournament only two weeks ago.
“Maybe we showed them too much respect. Denmark outplayed them. I don’t know how Slovenia played but I was sure that England wouldn’t beat them. I think we had a big chance to win a point against them, maybe three points.”
Tadic was not the only one cursing his Euro 2024 fantasy football selections. His manager Dragan Stojkovic could not have been more fulsome in his praise for England when the sides were drawn together in Hamburg in December. But now he has seen them up close, he wants a mulligan.
“England were supposed to be something from another world,” he told Serbian reporters after the match. “They were not.”
Depends which world, though, I suppose, Dragan. Not all aliens are going to be amazing at football, are they?
Ireland
Most of the British commentary about the Irish commentary has focused on James McClean’s views on how good Declan Rice is — for those who missed it, the Wrexham winger is going for “very good” but “not world-class” so, therefore, “overrated”.
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The subjectivity and subtexts of that are too much to go into here, so let us instead flag up what honorary Irishman Didi Hamann has been saying about Southgate on Irish TV.
“England don’t play football, they work football,” the former Stockport County manager said. “As a manager, if you want to get the respect of the whole squad, you have got to go after the big boys. If you go after the small boys, people won’t respect you.
“He’s at a stage now where the public have lost faith in him, the pundits have lost faith in him and England, and the team have lost faith in him as well. Some of the substitutions, you can’t follow, you don’t know what he’s thinking.
“The biggest problem is they’ve got Foden and Bellingham in the same team. It clearly doesn’t work but he hasn’t got the bottle to drop either of them. He’s got to take one of them out.”
Fair points, to be fair.
We could continue our tour of Europe’s football thought leaders but the above would have been more than enough for Jameson, who was the inspiration of the “Sid Yobbo” character in British satirical magazine Private Eye, to get his teeth into. You get the idea.
Do they mean Gareth? They surely do.
(Top photo: Richard Pelham/Getty Images))