Sticking with Gareth Southgate gives England their best chance

ARM ROUND THE SHOULDER: England manager Gareth Southgate (left) and Kieran Trippier outside the Souq Al-Wakra hotel, Qatar, following England's loss to France in their World Cup quarter-final in Al Khor. Pic: Martin Rickett/PA Wire

That you actually, truly, deep down in your bones, felt for them tells you how far they’ve come. There are many measures by which you can look at this England team and see not just progress but a paradigm shifted. That they can win you over on an emotional level is a telling measure too.

As French players wheeled down one end of Al Bayt Stadium hand in hand, a rosy ring of Bleus relief as much as joy, Gareth Southgate walked with purpose to the other. Another night of Qatar’s World Cup had become morning but Friday, Saturday, whatever, this was another English occasion. As he lifted his captain up from his haunches and held Harry Kane’s face in his palms, the memory click, click, clicked back 26 and a half years to Terry Venables doing exactly the same, only with Southgate’s head in his hands. The wheel keeps turning, 30 years of hurt that summer, now 56 this desert winter.