#le soccerfoot

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gareth southgate ferociously clasping jordan pickford  close to him in love + appreciation  reblog i f u agree

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lol reminder that a fair proportion of football chants are essentially ironic/ things you chant to cope with the inevitable pain + heartbreak??? e.g. the famous “we lose every week, we lose every week/ You’re nothing special, we lose every week” or “let’s pretend, let’s pretend, LET’S PRETEND WE SCORED A GOAL” — the whole premise of ‘football’s coming home', the song and the music video, is living a thousand disappointments, punctuated only occasionally by moments of bliss

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bonkers to me that ppl are smarming about football Not Coming Home After All. a) in this sophisticated musical metaphor we are talking about the ~spirit~ of le soccerfoot, which most defs has returned to this benighted land, b) we love this team + papa southgate not because they are “english” but because they are what england could be: GENTLE, DIVERSE, filled with waistcoats, an opportunity to forget jingoism and allow Love 2 Set The World In Motion

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This is a wonderful and extremely correct article by David Olusoga and tbh gets to the heart of why a lot of people who don’t normally care for le soccerfoot mondiale are so pleased; it’s really NOT about getting through to whichever round of the soccerfoot it is - it is a delight to see this young, super diverse squad, and to have a manager who is composed, humble, a Gentle Soul. Also Southgate was the England Under-21 manager for a lot of the current squad so like... he literally is their dad

For black and Asian people of my generation, the England team and the cross of St George were once ingredients in a toxic broth. For decades, a minority of England fans brought the nation and the national team into disrepute, bringing violence both to foreign streets and immigrant communities at home. The banner that fluttered above many of these ugly scenes was the flag of St George.

Such violence and abuse have not completely gone away, but in recent years those memories and associations have increasingly seemed out of step with contemporary reality. Gareth Southgate’s squad, with an average age of 26, have no memories of those earlier decades. They are England’s most diverse World Cup team, 11 of the 23-man squad are black or mixed-race, and that diversity runs deeper, beyond so-called visible minorities. Harry Kane, for example, is of Irish descent. Underestimated and until now overshadowed by the “golden generation” that preceded them, they are a team who exhibit none of the swaggering entitlement that previous England teams were – wrongly or rightly – accused of. In this, the manager leads by example. Arrogance is the last charge one could raise against Southgate. Composure, humility, integrity and intellect are the words that have been most commonly attached to him during this tournament.

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seriously how is this article about pippa grange the psychologist for the england nt the most healing mental health thing i have read in forever??? 

She wrote in 2013 that being a woman in a male team environment “is a constant navigation, for everyone. I have no interest in being one of the lads and I don’t quite fit in the ‘nurturing mother figure’ category in terms of the leadership work I do. I would be professionally ineffective if I remained in the background, psychologically safe with minimal voice, and I am not here to be the centre of attention as some form of entertainment. I don’t want to be completely separate because that would make me inaccessible and probably be a lonely place to operate from.”

so first - i really feel this is strong advice for any female person who’s working in a mostly male environment! don’t be a ‘mother’, don’t be ‘safe’, don’t be there for some sort of entertainment; there are a number of traps you can fall into as a female person in work and she’s sharply delineated a bunch of them

getting the players to sit down together in small groups to share their life experiences and anxieties, and to reveal intimate truths about their character and what drives them. The point, Southgate has said, is to build trust, “making them closer, with a better understanding of each other”.

getting them to open up!!! talk to each other! bond! õnly cønnect. is this important?? well, a) some of the older england players have said that in the past, entrenched club rivalries were an obstacle for them (steven gerrard: “i think the bond and the spirit and the closeness has to improve”), b) access to the psychologist for the 2014 WC 

. . .was offered to the players only if they felt they needed it – and not many would have admitted to wanting help.

and uhhh all of this - trust, preparation, routine, learning continually

Michael Caulfield says Southgate, with whom he worked at Middlesbrough, has a leadership style “built on incredible levels of trust between him and his players and staff. He was determined to convince the team there was nothing to fear from playing in the World Cup for England, whereas in the past people were nervous or fearful. He was determined to change that mindset from one of fear to one of adventure.”

“The skill is in your application to a task because that’s the bit you’re in control of . . . if you’re feeling fear you’re already mentally rehearsing it in a negative way. [In mental rehearsal] you prime your brain to play it how you would like to be. You might want to be confident, speak clearly. It’s not just positive thinking.”

“If you watch Harry Kane, if he’s been interrupted [before taking a penalty], he starts again – he picks the ball up and puts it down on the spot and goes through his whole routine again, and that’s something I’ve never seen England players do before. They usually want to get it over with as quickly as possible, but fear causes us to do things that are unhelpful.” Routines, says Barton, help to keep us in the moment, focused and in the right frame of mind.

Southgate : “I have learned from things that have gone wrong and had to pick myself up … Because of those failures, I feel it gives you the freedom of being able to say, ‘How might we be the best possible team?’ and not be afraid of what goes wrong – because whatever goes wrong we can deal with, as I have lived through it.”

Grange has written: “I’d like to turn this unhealthy preoccupation with success on its head and put it on the record that I think failure is really useful. For without failure we cannot progress longer, higher or faster. It’s a funny paradox – our successes are achieved through trying, and trying most often ends in failure. Every day in our general lives and our sporting lives we will win some and lose some; it’s just part of the way life should be . . . the important lesson is to learn from our failures, reassess, rethink, move forward (sometimes in a different direction) and keep those dreams and goals alive.”

like . . . this completely relives a bunch of conversations i had with my therapist c. 2014-2015 when i was clawing my way through depression. ultimate point though is that 

The era of hard-talking, tyrannical managers is over – both on and off the pitch. “Football, which I love and work in, is really bad at talking,” says Caulfield. “It does instructing and telling off but it doesn’t do talking and listening and empathy that well. . . Southgate, he says, realised early in his coaching career that instilling fear wasn’t going to work. “We all need a telling-off now and then – and he’s good at that, by the way –

he’s good at that by the way 

— but you’ll get far more from putting your faith in people than you will anything else. People had this lazy opinion that he’s too ‘nice’ and they see kindness as weakness, but it’s the most unbelievable strength if you use it in the right way.”

love’s got the world in motion tbh 

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 i call this picture ~The Arc Of Football Is Long But It Bends Towards Freedom~

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gareth southgate literally going round the whole team & giving each player a  hug. UGHHHHHH i’m rewinding and watching that again Gareth loves 2 hug

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i’m in france fyi and every car is zooming around and honking

i’m in a fairly remote village but every so often i hear a hysterical wave of cheering in the distance

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i’m going to live forever on the energy i stole from croatia in the first half

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quick question

is there a way to watch football without feeling like you might die from adrenaline because if so i would like to know it

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exclusive: gareth southgate’s pre extra time talk

“i’m so proud of you all. you’ve done so well. i love you”

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and they were roommates (oh my god, they were roommates)

dele alli essentially drinks spezi ( “try it... it’s unbelievable”)

dele alli’s footballing hero is stevie g

“i’ve been in [dele’s] car before ... shambles”

(whispered) “ah, very good del boy, very good”

“five out of five, what do i get?” [attempted hug]

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tracybaconnnn replied to your photoset “football-a-to-z: Semi Final July 11, 2018. opportunistic”

LOVING this kind of soccerfoot commentary

thank you for your kind words i hate that i am feeling these feelings

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harry kane just called gareth southgate THE GAFFER i  am feeling so much

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Southgate, [Caulfield] says, realised early in his coaching career that instilling fear wasn’t going to work. “We all need a telling-off now and then – and he’s good at that, by the way – but you’ll get far more from putting your faith in people than you will anything else.

 we all need a telling-off now and then and he’s good at that by the way 

paging @daddysouthgate​