Gareth Southgate is three-quarters of the way into an audition that not only has he already passed, but everyone knows it. It helps that this is a job interview where no one else is being interviewed. It helps, too, that there is a paucity of other candidates for his prospective — and indeed current — employers to consider.
The England job, it seems, is Southgate’s to lose and in such a way that even a respectable defeat on Tuesday night would probably not cost him it. That may be just as well: England normally lose to Spain, usually failing to score. Since Sven-Goran Eriksson’s reign began with a 3-0 win against the Spanish, England have lost four of five subsequent meetings, usually seeing their technical deficiencies exposed by superior passers.
The Swede’s bow came 15 years ago, although Southgate probably didn’t have that in mind when he said England are 15 years behind Spain.
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• Richard Jolly: Lucky to beat Luxembourg, Blind's Netherlands in need of vision, identity and a core
Eriksson, expensive, foreign and with a trophy-winning pedigree, heralded an altogether different approach to Southgate. Then the England job held rather more allure than it does now. Then the England Football Association were willing to scour the world. Now they appear to have focused on a diminished English market. If Southgate is the outstanding candidate, it is partly just because of a process of elimination.
Sam Allardyce has come and gone rather ignominiously. Alan Pardew has 24 points from his last 32 league games. Eddie Howe has the judgment to recognise he is better off at Bournemouth. Little wonder Southgate is sufficiently confident that he has called upon the FA to make a decision.
That choice may show that England are 15 years — and one World Cup and two European Championships — behind Spain in one respect, but only a few months behind in another. His counterpart on Sunday night, Julen Lopetegui, has followed a similar career path. He has managed Spain’s age-group teams, winning both the European Under 19 and Under 21 Championships, while Southgate excelled in this summer’s Toulon Tournament.
Both have selected squads that feature healthy contingents of players they have helped develop. As the international game lacks the primacy and the allure of the lucrative club game, it makes more sense to select a manager who knows the players. Spain are blessed with a distinct style of play. England’s search for an identity is compounded by the lack of one, so promoting from within is the closest they get to forging one.
The difference lies in the scrutiny. Managers can rotate with the U21s and comparatively few notice. Every choice with the senior side is put under the microscope. Southgate has already shown himself unafraid to drop his captain, Wayne Rooney, and promote a protégé, in Jesse Lingard, but has had the same core to the side for his three competitive games. A friendly brings a first chance to experiment, but that may be mitigated by the need to avoid the sort of setback that might bring renewed questions if Southgate, the man who oversaw Middlesbrough’s 2009 relegation, is really the man to take charge on a permanent basis.
So he has a balancing act. He is denied Harry Kane, who has returned to Tottenham Hotspur to work on his fitness after injury. He may bring in Jack Wilshere for his first appearance since a disastrous Euro 2016. Jamie Vardy could start while Marcus Rashford perhaps should. Yet the reality is that the majority of Southgate’s starting XI are comparatively inexperienced in their country’s colours so there are reasons to believe that players such as John Stones, Danny Rose, Eric Dier and Raheem Sterling would benefit from facing elite opposition.
For the acting manager, it will be a first chance to test himself against one of the best, but probably not the last.
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