Do you remember July 2016? After a miserable, sodden June of flash floods across Britain, the heavens dumped a final month’s worth of rain on the day that the country got itself down to the polls to vote for Brexit. Four days later, an England team containing Kyle Walker, Harry Kane and Wayne Rooney marked 40 years of hurt by getting knocked out of the Euros by Iceland. This sporting humiliation felt like the final straw.
Gloom hung over much of the nation like a pall. Of course, had we known then what was to come – the rivers full of sewage , the patients dying in NHS corridors and in ambulances backed up outside hospitals, the thousands of children going hungry – maybe the sense of despair would have been keener. But some things seemed certain even then.
The Brexit promises would evaporate one by one and the England football team would continue to serve up disappointment in ways that had to be choked down with regularity. Back then, the job of restoring national footballing pride was handed to Sam Allardyce, who was forced to resign 67 days later when he was caught in a newspaper sting allegedly trying to use his prestige to line his own pockets. In desperation, the FA turned to Gareth Southgate , the articulate young manager of the England Under-21 side.
Southgate had been a committed, likeable player but a relatively unsuccessful manager at club and international level. He was generally agreed to be a decent bloke, who had suffered the ultimate footballing torment: .
