Gareth Southgate has extended his contract as England manager until the end of 2024 – but his renumeration will be linked to achievements during the next three years.
The new deal will mean Southgate, 51, will be in charge of the national team for the Qatar 2022 World Cup and the 2024 European Championship in Germany. A break clause straight after Euro 2024 has been included, but if it is not activated the terms will run until the end of that year, giving the Football Association time to decide on the next course of action.
It was, however, deemed appropriate to agree a performance-based salary after the FA was forced to make 124 staff redundant facing losses of around £300 million in 2020 due to the pandemic. Southgate’s previous contract was worth around £3m per year but he is believed to have earned a significant increase on that, should performance bonuses be met.
“I understand that people will ask how we can afford this given the financial losses at the FA,” FA chief executive Mark Bullingham said. “While I will not go into detail on the contract I will say that it is a performance-related contract and any rises or increases in bonuses are self-funded by either increases in commercial revenue or tournament prize money.”
Bullingham, who devised the terms of the contract, first spoke to Southgate and his assistant Steve Holland, who also signed an extension, before last summer’s European Championship, in which Southgate led the national team to their first ever final. Discussions continued in recent months.
Questions were asked as to why Southgate was not considered when three Premier League manager jobs – at Tottenham, Aston Villa and Norwich – recently became available, but Southgate revealed he had already agreed to the extension.
“I am very conscious that we all took cuts last year to help the organisation get to the place it could be,” Southgate said. “But also the men’s senior team drives a lot of the revenue that comes into the organisation so to fund what we do in other areas of the FA we need a successful senior men’s team.
“Our challenge is to continue to do that to help some of that funding but also to role-model some of the things we want to do throughout English football, to encourage English coaches, to keep St George’s Park current and a hub that really makes the nation or the football community proud. That is part of the role here that is perhaps different to a club, but I cannot claim to be the brains behind that idea. It is very important, though, that the two things align.”
He added: “Within the FA I am very conscious of what we have been through as an organisation. I am very conscious that we fund grass roots football and so whatever we have earned over the period of time it would have been right to have to prove ourselves. Now we have Wembley full more regularly and the prize money for reaching the latter stages of tournaments and we want to make sure that when we are sitting listening to our chief financial officer telling us where we are that we have more than played our part in keeping the business side in the right place. That is a consequence of performances and results and bringing enjoyment to the country as well.”
Analysis: Why every England fan should be pleased with three more years of Southgate
By Daniel Storey, i chief football writer
England’s 10-0 win in San Marino was record-breaking for its margin of victory, but significant for Gareth Southgate.
He surpassed Sven-Goran Eriksson as England’s longest-serving manager (in terms of games played) since 1990.
If Southgate makes it to the end of his new contract, he will sit behind only Walter Winterbottom and Alf Ramsey, the two footballing knights who respectively took England into the professional age and to the top of the world.
Southgate fell into this job. Sam Allardyce was the permanent choice with the temporary tenure, scuppered by his own hubris and left to stew about the perceived witch hunt that caused his downfall.
But unlike so many of his predecessors, Southgate has grown into this job rather than been suffocated by it. He is only the second England manager to record consecutive major tournament semi-final appearances and he is more responsible than anyone for reconnecting the English public with their football team. If hearing Sweet Caroline on tedious repeat is the only price to pay, it was worth it.
Whether Southgate’s character is important is open to debate; these things generally appear crucial when the team is doing well and become meaningless when it fails. But Southgate brought an openness and honesty to the role that had wavered over the previous two decades.
He is, simply put, a decent man with decent ideals who is as desperate as any supporter for England to win but understands the new-found power that players and managers have to act as pillars of their communities and difference-makers in areas far bigger, and far more important, than football.
Southgate is not immune from criticism. He has regularly been lambasted for being too defensive despite England being one of the highest-scoring teams in international football during his reign. His big-match record was picked apart before the European Championship but unhelpful psychological barriers were finally destroyed against Germany in June.
His tenure will ultimately be judged by his ability to win a major tournament, but that itself is proof of his own success. Now our hope is born out of logic rather than misplaced jingoism or desperation.
It is tempting, if you are a Southgate critic, to remark that he has merely been the beneficiary of good fortune, thrust into a job ahead of schedule at a time when English football had finally implemented a coaching system that promoted technique and poise over blood and thunder. But do not overlook Southgate’s courage in overseeing that progression.
England’s Euro 2020 squad, with the extra pressure playing at home ensured, was their youngest in 60 years and it excelled. He has given debuts to 20 different players since September last year; 14 of them were aged 23 or under.
And so he has earned this contract extension; anyone who argues otherwise is deliberately ignoring his progress and deliberately fabricating obvious potential successors.
England are not perfect because England will never be perfect; doubts are a prerequisite when you have gone 55 years without a major honour. Difficult questions will lie ahead if England fail in Qatar or Germany, but then that’s the lot of any England manager.
But that’s not really the point. Southgate has taken us closer to a dream that we assumed had passed by on cold, biting winds. He has avoided the root-and-branch tournament reviews that littered our past as we worked out how best to apportion double doses of blame and shame. He has created competition for places like never before and a pathway for bright young talent.
On and off the pitch, Southgate has constructed an England squad of which we can be proud for who they are, what they represent and how they play.
Three more years of that sounds like something we should all get on board with.