Gareth Southgate offers touch of hope

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Know ye by this press conference that we, the FA, consent to the contracting of World Cup squad-ship between our dearly beloved Gareth and his brave 23-man selection. Although obviously not Jack, Joe, Adam or Jonjo who are on this occasion gutted to miss out, but for whom the door is never closed, and all the lads are still very much in the frame going forwards. There was an unavoidable air of ceremony about Gareth Southgate’s World Cup squad camera call on Thursday morning. On a bright, brittle late-spring day Wembley was already hung with its own Cup final bunting before a day that has the feel of a royal wedding in any case, with the usual buttonholes and dignitaries and that air of slightly chintzy national holiday. With the England squad announced the day before this was a more formal occasion deep in the bowels of Graham Glasgow Youth jersey Wembley Stadium, the first note in the incidental music of promises, war cries, apologies and farewells that tends to soundtrack every England tournament summer. And so enter Gareth to a fusillade of camera flashes, dressed in sports coat and slacks, hair slicked touchingly to one side like a 1930s intellectual. England’s manager has come a long way in the art of public speaking since the days when he was described by one wag as resembling an anteater that is only just realising it shouldn’t be able to talk. This was in many ways a faultless, likable, entirely engaging performance from an increasingly coherent and convincing England manager. For half an hour Southgate spoke with sound good sense, offering perfectly pitched reasoning for every decision, every close call – to the extent you almost missed the old hysterical jingoism, the doomed sweating hopes of his predecessors. Clearly Southgate has found his tone, his managerial register. It just so happens – but then, this is England – that his tone is funereal, sombre, valedictory, with England’s manager coming across less like the curator of a piece of high-summer light entertainment, and more a long-suffering country vet who appears at the door in the wee hours in his waxed jacket to tell you your dog’s been run over. Perhaps it’s even something grander and more martial. Because Southgate spent the opening 15 minutes of England’s great World Cup adventure speaking in hushed, elegiac tones about players who aren’t actually going in the clipped, formal tones of a decorated general offering tribute to the fallen of the Vernon Hargreaves III Youth jersey Somme. Jonjo, Adam, Jack. All so fine. All so very young. The conversation with Joe Hart “had not been easy”, Southgate admitted. On the topic of Jack Wilshere he said perhaps the most illuminating thing any England manager has come out with Ryan Jensen Youth jersey in recent memory, admitting that the job of the manager is to “hide as best you can the weaknesses of the team”. Beyond this there was a lot of talk of starting again and offering hope. It is easy to forget in the humdrum churn of fixtures that this is still a national team http://www.footballjetsofficialshop.com/Nike-Christian-Hackenberg-Jersey.html that sees itself in recovery, waiting for the tide to turn, http://www.authenticnetstore.com/Demarre_Carroll_Jerseywith Gareth stood at the end of his jetty as smoke wreathes the http://www.newyorkislandersofficialonline.com/Adidas-Andrew-Ladd-Jersey horizon, seeing hope in that small-ship flotilla ranged across the bay. He was excellent on the topic of experience versus youth: “We talk a lot about Buster Skrine Youth jersey experience. But if that experience is a bad one it can be damaging.” No England manager has said this before either. And it’s true. cheap jerseys free shipping wholesale jerseys from china wholesale nfl jerseys cheap nfl jerseyswholesale nfl jerseys cheap jerseys china wholesale jerseys