Gareth Southgate reveals he is not looking for return to football management

Sir Gareth Southgate says he is not looking for a return to football management, saying it would be hard to recreate the “higher calling” he found as England’s manager.

Southgate indicated he intends to focus on working with young people and helping to counter the “negative narrative” he says is found in the country.

In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Southgate was asked how he responded to being linked with vacant management roles in the Premier League and elsewhere.

“I’ve had one of the most incredible jobs in football which also had a higher purpose because it was my country,” he replied. “That’s going to be very hard to replicate. Having had 37 years in football I’m enjoying finding other areas where I think I might be able to make a difference.”

Southgate, speaking before his book Dear England: Lessons in Leadership is published on Thursday, says he is “very passionate” about providing role models for young people, extending the lessons he learned as the manager of England’s men’s football side between September 2016 and July 2024 and as a parent.

Southgate believes his experience of coaching England, where the national team went from being loathed to beloved, can be applied more broadly. “We had a huge disconnect with the public when we started,” he said. “People saw us as high-ego players but we were able to turn that around. I saw the power that the team had to bring people together of every community.”

As a parent, Southgate observed: “You want to give your kids the best possible start, but there is a point when they don’t want to listen to parents any more. I experienced that in my house in the same way everybody else will … but I do think this is an important space for us.

“There’s a negative narrative around our country at the moment and we’ve got to give young people hope, we’ve got to give them guidance. We’ve got incredible talent but we need to them to find the right role models, the right friendship groups because those decisions have such a big impact on the rest of their lives.”

Southgate insisted that “there is more that unites us [in the UK] than divides us” but that the focus in the culture was on division. “It’s understandable why people are disaffected,” he said. “Economically lots of places are in tough situations now and that’s going to prompt desires for change. But I have seen the ability to unite the country. I saw during Covid people doing shopping for the neighbours and that’s when we as a nation are at our best, when we’ve been pushed into a corner and come out and shown resilience.”