Former England manager Gareth Southgate has revealed he turned to music to help him deal with the heartache of leaving the job.
The 54-year-old stepped down after eight years in the role following England’s 2-1 defeat to Spain in the Euro 24 final in July.
But it wasn’t football anthems Three Lions or Vindaloo that he listened to. It was a love song by Adele.
Southgate, tipped to be knighted in the New Year Honours, says he played her hit Someone Like You on repeat after deciding to quit.
On today’s Desert Island Discs he tells host Lauren Laverne: ‘I kept playing it towards the end of the Euros because I knew I was going to be leaving. I’d made my mind up.’
In the 2011 hit, Adele sings: ‘Nothing compares, no worries or cares, regrets and mistakes, they’re memories made. Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?’
Gareth Southgate turned to music to help him through the heartache of leaving his role as England manager
Southgate revealed that he regularly played Adele’s 2011 hit Someone Like You towards the end of his tenure
Southgate says that even though the song is about the end of a love affair, it would remind him of his role with England whenever he heard it played.
‘There are so many of the words within it that, even if I hear it today, relate to my relationship with England and their relationship to me and how I feel about it all,’ he reveals.
‘They [the lover in the song] have got to move on, and you wish them the best and there are regrets, but they’re actually memories that were made.
‘There are so many lines within it that really resonate with me.’
The father of two, who chose the track as one of his eight castaway discs, is known to be a huge Adele fan and featured in the star’s An Audience With… at the London Palladium in 2021.
Now adjusting to life outside football, Southgate says he has no intention of becoming a ‘back seat’ manager when his successor Thomas Tuchel takes over in the New Year.
‘That chapter in my life is closed now,’ he says. ‘It will always live with me. There will always be part of it that is hard to give up and I have also got to recognise that the team now has to go on and I have got to give them space as much as possible.’
He adds: ‘I am sure there will be times in the future when I am quoted about the team, but I am going to try and avoid that as much as I can. I would never want to be in the way.’
Since leaving, he reveals, he has consulted other public figures about how they navigated major changes in their own lives, but he declines to identify his advisers.
Southgate applauding fans after England lost 2-1 to Spain in the final of the UEFA Euro 2024
He says: ‘I’ve been 37 years as a player and coach and I’m not against the next period of my life being something totally different.’
Southgate, whose choices include songs by U2, Ed Sheeran and Stormzy, also says he has no regrets about the controversy caused by England players taking the knee before games.
‘I alienated people that were supportive of me prior to that,’ he says. ‘But I felt it was an important message for young people.’
l Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 today at 10am and on BBC Sounds.
