Southgate, De la Fuente, Scaloni: Why summer 2024 was powered by the federation coach

Gareth Southgate, Luis de la Fuente, Lionel Scaloni: all coaches who reached a continental tournament final this summer.

There are few similarities between Southgate (England), De la Fuente (Spain) and Scaloni (Argentina). They are different ages — 53, 63, 46 — and coach with unique styles. The golden thread is their route to becoming head coach of their respective national teams. All are federation coaches, working with age-group sides of that same country before being promoted to lead the senior men’s one.

They had limited senior coaching experience/reputation before those roles.

Southgate spent three-and-a-bit seasons managing Middlesbrough, after ending his playing days with them a month earlier. He inherited a mid-table Premier League team (and the beaten finalists in the previous season’s UEFA Cup) but they declined every season under him (more goals conceded, fewer points, lower league finish), were relegated in 2008-09 and sacked him early the following season.

De la Fuente’s background was in academy football, at Sevilla and then Athletic Bilbao (both clubs he had played for), moving up to manage the reserves at the latter. His highest-level club job was 11 games as Alaves’ head coach, in Spain’s second tier, at the start of the 2011-12 season.

Scaloni has never managed at club level. After retiring as a player in 2015, he was an assistant under Jorge Sampaoli at Sevilla for the better part of the 2016-17 season, then followed Sampaoli when he was appointed Argentina head coach the next summer. Scaloni managed Argentina Under-20s for six friendly games in the second half of 2018, before he and national under-17s manager Pablo Aimar were named caretaker head coaches of the senior side — Sampaoli was sacked following the World Cup in Russia (where Argentina lost 4-3 to eventual winners France in the round of 16). Scaloni was placed in sole charge that November.

(Logan Riely/Getty Images)

Southgate was also an initial interim appointment in 2016, following Sam Allardyce’s sole match as the successor to Roy Hodgson, after three years managing the under-21s — in his only tournament in that time was Euro 2015, where England lost two out of three matches and finished bottom of their group.

De la Fuente’s progression was more gradual and successful: five years managing Spain’s under-18s and under-19s (four of them at the same time), winning the Euros with the latter in 2015. In 2018, he was promoted to under-21s coach, and won their Euros the following year. De la Fuente was also coach of Spain’s Olympic (primarily under-23s) team in 2020, where they won silver, losing to Brazil after extra time.

All three appointments were criticised for being safe, supposedly lacking ambition.

Argentina footballing icon Diego Maradona, who managed the national team himself from 2008-10, joked that Scaloni “could not even direct traffic”. England supposedly missed out on appointing Arsenal’s title-winning French boss Arsene Wenger at a time when Jurgen Klopp had recently joined Liverpool and Pep Guardiola just moved to Manchester City. Names and reputations mattered. De la Fuente replaced Luis Enrique, a 62-cap Spain international and treble-winning coach of one of the best Barcelona teams since the Guardiola era, following the 2022 World Cup.

Looking back, what made sense was what those three were, not who they were.

Martin Glenn, the FA’s chief executive at the time, said Southgate’s appointment owed to his leadership and tactical mind, but “it’s his understanding of international football and the development set-up that is important”.

The trio had sufficient experience in international football and camp-style coaching. Current Canada men’s national team head coach Jesse Marsch notoriously calls international and club football, where he has managed in five countries, “two different sports”. An article on football data website The Analyst in 2021 highlighted three important nuances: first, national teams play four times fewer games than club sides every season (11 versus 44). Second, they rarely get to enjoy consistent or first-choice squads when they do play, and third, international matches, in Europe especially, are slower-paced and less transitional than the club game.

Germany head coach Julian Nagelsmann, who has managed clubs including RB Leipzig and Bayern Munich, explained the differences involved in coaching international football in an interview for the website of UEFA, the European game’s governing body, before the Euros this summer: “It’s more complicated compared to when you’re a club manager. We (managers and players) don’t see each other in training every day, we’re not on-site all the time. You have to watch lots of games, think about what you want from each position and which players fit based on how they are playing for their clubs.”

Nagelsmann has recently swapped club football for the international scene (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

England, Argentina and Spain were experiencing (relative) sustained failure before they appointed a federation coach.

Southgate inherited a team who had not won a tournament knockout game since the 2006 World Cup. They had underperformed — failing to qualify for Euro 2008, adding another penalty shootout loss to the collection at Euro 2012, making a group-stage exit from the 2014 World Cup and getting eliminated by Iceland, a country with the population of Leicester (or Cleveland, Ohio, if you prefer), at Euro 2016 — and were unable to find tactical solutions to take advantage of what was viewed as a golden generation of playing talent.

Argentina were trophyless since the 1993 Copa America when Scaloni arrived. Uruguay knocked them out in the quarter-finals of a home Copa America in 2011. When they did make finals, Argentina kept losing them — Copa America runners-up four times in five tournaments between 2004 and 2016 (three of them on penalties), as well as in a 2014 World Cup that went to extra time. There was genuine belief the great Lionel Messi would finish his international career without silverware.

De la Fuente stepped up with a Spain side miles off their golden generation of 2008-12, who won three major tournaments in a row. They had not reached a major final since the last of those triumphs, Euro 2012, and only won two knockout games across five tournaments between 2014 and 2022 (and one of those was on penalties). Spain had plateaued while trying to replicate the possession and passing identity of the Luis Aragones/Vicente del Bosque era.

All three nations, at varying speeds and from different start points, have followed the same evolution: reconfigure the team, fast-track young talent, trial different systems, realign the playing philosophy and structure the team around superstars.

Southgate was pivotal in implementing ‘England DNA’, a revolutionised playing philosophy focused on improving technical quality. He was also at the FA in 2011, when it launched the Elite Player Performance Plan to create better club academies: it formalised structure, improved coaching and introduced sports science and performance analysis. The first green shoots of it all emerged in 2017 when, in the space of four months, England won World Cups at under-17s and under-20s level, and the Under-19 European Championship.

England youth 2017-18:

Euro U17 2017 🥈
Euro U17 2018 SF
Euro U19 2017 🏆
Euro U19 2018 GS
World Cup U17 🏆
World Cup U20 🏆
Euro U21 SF

10 players from these teams are at Euro 2020: Pickford, Henderson, Chilwell, James, Mount, Foden, Grealish, Sancho, Saka & Calvert-Lewin. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 pic.twitter.com/ewa3zgoqVS

— Football Talent Scout – Jacek Kulig (@FTalentScout) June 10, 2021

The trio’s policy of youth promotion shows in their debuts figures. Southgate gave out 66 in 102 games, with those players amassing 881 caps. For Scaloni, it is 47 debutants across 75 matches (558 caps). De la Fuente is only 22 games into his tenure but 17 players have made their senior Spain debuts under him (82 caps).

Declan Rice, at 25, was the oldest midfielder in England’s ‘box’ at Euro 2024, playing alongside Kobbie Mainoo (19) and behind Phil Foden (turned 24 in late May) and Jude Bellingham (became 21 during the tournament). De la Fuente’s team was built around its wingers, Lamine Yamal, the youngest-ever scorer at a Euros at 16 (he turned 17 the day before last weekend’s final), and Nico Williams, who had celebrated his 22nd birthday the previous day.

De la Fuente and Southgate had established relationships while managing players at age-group level. In Southgate’s case, 22 players who appeared in his England Under-21s sides went on to be picked by him in the senior team too, including John Stones, Harry Kane, Jordan Pickford, Luke Shaw and Marcus Rashford.

“Many of them have come through successful youth levels and that usually bodes well for success,” said De la Fuente of his Spain team ahead of their Euros final against England. Six of De la Fuente’s starting XI from the Olympic final in August 2021 played in Berlin on Sunday: goalkeeper Unai Simon, midfielders Martin Zubimendi, Mikel Merino and Dani Olmo, plus full-back Marc Cucurella and forward Mikel Oyarzabal, the pair who combined for Spain’s late winner.

“If you insist on dying with your original idea, it won’t end well,” said Scaloni, who turned Argentina into a tactically flexible team while keeping Messi’s superstar role.

Southgate’s words three games into his interim period were telling. England beat Scotland 3-0 in a World Cup qualifier at Wembley, but Southgate’s focus was on playing the game, not the occasion. He had England build up through the thirds: “We wanted to play in a style which we believed was right in the long term, that would encourage our younger players. There is more risk in that. It’s not going to happen in two or three games but every game we get a bit more into the players. This team has a lot of improving to do. It won’t be a straightforward path.”

De La Fuente’s Spain look nothing close to the team — in personnel or tactics — that lost to Morocco on penalties after a 0-0 draw in the 2022 World Cup’s round of 16. Spain had 77 per cent possession that night but one shot on target in two hours of play, only for Luis Enrique to say they had “executed my idea of football perfectly”. De La Fuente wanted “to evolve without giving up our style”. He turned Spain into a team who crossed more and dribbled more, and they were also the best counter-attacking team at Euro 2024.

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There are the obvious benefits of no language barrier, while age-group coaching gives a chance for younger/less experienced coaches to cut their teeth and develop with the players.

After all, for better or worse, the statistics show a World Cup has never been won with a non-native coach. The Euros has once in its 17 editions (Greece in 2004 were managed by Otto Rehhagel, a German). It’s happened at the Copa America five times in the 48 tournaments but only twice since the Second World War — both for Chile, ironically with Argentina’s Sampaoli in 2015 and Argentina-born Spaniard Juan Antonio Pizzi a year later.

If a primary concern is that England have few realistic, quality replacements for Southgate, then it underlines the necessity for age-group coaches who can step up when the time comes. They know the philosophy of the senior team because they are the ones responsible for developing the youth players who will play in it.

England repeating the pattern with under-21s manager Lee Carsley as Southgate’s successor would make sense. Yes, the job has changed compared to 2016 — England now have the squad to win tournaments and need the tactics to match, but that is exactly what Carsley managed with the under-21s last summer. His team won England’s first European Championship in that age group since 1984, playing a fluid attacking style and not conceding a goal in the six matches.

Will Lee Carsley get a chance to work with the likes of Anthony Gordon at senior level? (Levan Verdzeuli/Getty Images)

Promoting age-group coaches is not exclusive to these three countries.

Japan did it with current manager Hajime Moriyasu, previously their under-23s boss, and were runners-up at the 2019 Asian Cup and got to the round of 16 at the 2022 World Cup, topping a group containing Spain and Germany before losing to Croatia on penalties.

Jaime Lozano was Mexico’s Olympic team (under-23) coach as they earned bronze medals in Japan three years ago, then became senior team caretaker in 2023 and quickly won the CONCACAF Gold Cup. Mexico were CONCACAF Nations League finalists under him this March, losing to the United States. Lozano took Mexico to the Copa America this summer, but has been sacked after their group-stage exit.

Two of the better African sides of recent years, Cameroon and Senegal, enjoyed success after promoting Rigobert Song and Aliou Cisse from youth-team roles. Equatorial Guinea and Angola also now have federation coaches managing the senior men’s teams. Other nations have followed this approach with a non-native coach, notably Qatar (Spain’s Felix Sanchez), Indonesia (Shin-tae Yong, from South Korea), China (Aleksandar Jankovic, a Serb) and Vietnam (Frenchman Philippe Troussier).

There was no crowning trophy, but Southgate, England’s longest-serving manager since 1966 World Cup winner Sir Alf Ramsey was sacked after failing to qualify for the same tournament in 1974, led England to the semi-finals in three of his four tournaments, as well as third place in the 2018-19 Nations League. Under him, they reached their first-ever European Championship final in 2021, then did the same again this summer — their first major final played somewhere other than England.

Argentina finished third in Scaloni’s first Copa America in Brazil in 2019, then won it (again in Brazil) in 2021. The following year, they won their first World Cup since 1986. Argentina ended Colombia’s 28-game unbeaten run to win this summer’s Copa America, making them the first South American nation to win three straight major titles. Scaloni is Argentina’s longest-serving coach since Carlos Bilardo (1983-90).

Under De la Fuente, Spain have won the Nations League in 2023 and now the Euros — their men’s team’s first trophies in over a decade.

Promoting a federation or an age-group coach is not foolproof, but it comes with fewer risks than appointing coaches from the club game based on names and reputation.

Expect to see the trend continue.

(Top photo: Christian Charisius/picture alliance via Getty Images)