Who's the best.?.. Southgate sometimes frustrates the hell out of me ..but in World Cup and Euro tournament football and qualification his record is arguably pretty good when compared . Southgate so far has qualified for all his tournaments and reached the KO stage each time. reaching a quarter final WC 2022, a semi final WC 2018 but lost 3rd place play off finishing 4th. Reached the final of Euro 2020 losing the final on penalties. Robson failed to qualify for Euro 1984, reached a quarter final in WC 1986, finished bottom of the group with three defeats in Euro 1988. reached a WC semi final in 1990. but lost 3rd place play off finishing 4th Ramsey...as host nation England didn't have to qualify for WC 1966 but won it. The Euro's in 1968 were rather different...England had won the Home International Championship which gave automatic qualification to the quarter final stage beating Spain 3-1 over 2 legs... England lost the semi final but won 3rd place play off. World Cup 1970...as holders England didn't have to qualify but lost in the quarter finals, however the competition had fewer teams and quarter final would equate to a last 16 game today. Euros 1972 England qualified from a group including Switzerland, Malta and Greece, but lost the quarter final 0-1 over 2 legs to W Germany. WC 1974 failed to qualify.
In the Euros of 1972, we lost the first leg 3-1 at home to West Germany. Gunter Netzer ran the show that night. We drew the second leg 0-0.
Robson was lambasted prior to Italia '90. Awful '88 Euros & was already contracted to PSV. The WC semi saved his legacy..
Got to take you up on the point about the QF in 1970 being like a last 16 game today SB. It was still the best eight teams in thw world in that round despite it being the first knockout round and we played a German side that won the Euros two years later and the World Cup in 74.
Robson was in the last chance saloon during the 1990 World Cup, never mind before it, scraping a 1-0 against Egypt to get out of the group, after the players had revolted and forced him into changing the formation. Like Southgate in 2018 he had a relatively easy path to the semis. Belgium weren’t a force in 1990, but it took a 120th minute bit of Gazza/Platt magic to get past them, and then a late, questionable penalty to get us back in the match against Cameroon. We almost got to the final, but we weren’t great. Southgate also almost got us to a final, whilst simultaneously breaking the record for losing more games in a single World Cup, i.e. every time we played anybody who were half-decent. But since beating West Germany in 1966 we haven’t beaten anybody in the knockout rounds who were half-decent. The best teams we’ve beaten were Denmark, Sweden and Belgium, but not at a time when any of those were really any good. So it’s safe to say that we are consistently not good enough and only progress if luck is on our side with the fixtures. Compare this with Morocco, who have beaten two better teams in this World Cup’s knockout stages than we have beaten since 1966, and this after they beat Belgium in the group stage. And all this despite us having one of the most expensive sides at every single tournament, suggesting, maybe, that some of our players are overhyped. The best England manager in my lifetime didn’t get the chance to take a team to the World Cup. It would have been very interesting to see how Terry Venables would have fared.
On the 70s we had very few overseas players in the top flight of English football yet stuggled massively on the international stage. Fast forward to now and look at the talented young English players we have. We have a good future.
