World Cup 2018: Top 10 Managers of the tournament

#2 Gareth Southgate

Southgate has turned the stale unit that was vanquished by lowly Iceland into a young spritely team that managed to inspire English fans

Graham Taylor. Glenn Hoddle. Kevin Keegan. Sven Goran-Eriksson. Steve McClaren. Fabio Capello. Roy Hodgson. Even Sam Allardyce.

Those are all managerial careers that have been destroyed (or damaged significantly) by the responsibility of being England manager. It is a job so infamous that Gareth Southgate initially did not even want it.

However, since taking the job, Southgate has turned the stale unit that was vanquished by lowly Iceland into a young spritely team that managed to inspire English fans.

While eventually, Football did not come home, the fact that England fans were dreaming of a repeat of 1966 is an achievement in itself.

In March of this year, Southgate began to use a rather adventurous 3-5-2 formation. The eventual result of that formation felt rather strange: wing-back Kyle Walker was used as a central defender, winger Raheem Sterling became a striker and the likes of Ashely Young, Harry Maguire and Kieran Trippier were brought into the side.

It worked perfectly: England scraped past Tunisia before demolishing Panama in a manner that previous English teams couldn’t. They even won a penalty shootout.

While the loss to Croatia was indeed disappointing, England was exciting again. Southgate did much more than popularize waistcoats or perfect set-pieces, he made the Three Lions respectable again.