The overwhelming impression was of a man entirely comfortable in his own skin. Gareth Southgate spoke with logic and humor but, most of all, he left the unmistakable sense that England’s manager may know a bit more about this level of football than some people realize. “The only thing that bothers me is that everybody keeps asking me about the pressure,” he said. “That’s when I start to think: ‘Bloody hell, maybe I’m not seeing what it should be’. If I felt under-prepared, if we were not ready and we’d spent the last 10 days flapping about who should be in, I would probably feel more anxious.” Instead, he and his staff have held a meeting every Monday to discuss his World Cup squad, the various back-up options and all the logistics of preparing for a major tournament. Small details, in many cases, right down to whether the players should avoid the “misery” of Twitter and inviting a psychologist to join them in Russia. Dr. Pippa Grange, who will travel with the squad, has presumably been warned to expect some resistance from one or two players. To quote Jamie Vardy when Leicester City did something similar: “There’s no point putting a psychologist in front of me because he won’t get inside my head.” Southgate has given them permission to go on holiday this week with no rules attached. Was that a risk bearing in mind some of the headlines England’s footballers have attracted before other tournaments? “Before Euro 96 I had three days in Magaluf with Aston Villa,” Southgate explained, “so it would be a bit hypocritical for me to discuss what the correct preparation was. Everything in a footballer’s life these days is ‘fill this bloody form in’. There’s a danger we overfill them with professionalism and doing the right thing. They need a switch-off and I don’t see an issue. I’m not interested in what they do over the next few days.” Southgate kept his memories of Magaluf to himself but there was a giveaway smile. “I went for a run on a couple of mornings,” he said. “Though it might have been a run back home, rather than a ‘run’.” To put it another way, the England manager intends to take the unusual step of treating his players like adults. Again, it’s the small details, such as allowing them to leave England’s base camp in Repino to visit St. Petersburg without feeling the need to call out a search party. Other managers would impose curfew times or restrict access to mobile phones. “I don’t like loads of rules,” Southgate countered. “The players are responsible enough, they know what’s expected. Sometimes, if they have their phones that means they spend time together, looking at videos and interacting. If they haven’t, they just rush back to their rooms.” In Fabio Capello’s days as manager, the Football Association issued an official code of conduct rationing the time players spent on video or computer games, as well as banning them from making comments on social media unless it was authorized. Quietly, that has been abolished under Southgate’s tenure. He will, however, warn his players that Twitter can be an instant mood-killer. “Personally I’m not sure there’s value to reading the comments that come in,” he said. “It comes back to what creates pressure, or what creates misery, in your life. Generally, there’s a lot of social media that can be negative, so why invite that into your life?” Southgate has not put a message on Twitter since April 2015 and seems perfectly happy to have made the break. “I can’t ban them [the players] from looking at it because who knows what they’re doing when they go to their room? But I would make the suggestion: ‘Is it a good idea to read all that [abuse]?’ If you can rationalize it, accept it and put it in its own place, then fine. But I don’t know too many people who can. Even if there are 50 good replies, you can’t help but think about the one person who gives you advice you don’t want to hear.” Nobody pointed out there was more just one dissenter after Southgate had named his squad earlier in the week. Yet the England manager did not show a flicker of self-doubt when it came to explaining his choices and, though he was tactful not to say anything that could be construed as overly critical, there were various clues when it came to the players who had been left out. All the great teams, he said, from Liverpool in the 1970s and 1980s, to Milan in the 1990s and the modern Manchester City, had “athleticism, energy and pace”. He wanted his team to press the opposition, he added, and hunt down the ball. Listening to this little speech, it felt clear why Jack Wilshere and Jonjo Shelvey were considered only briefly. The explanation for Shelvey’s omission concluded with a mention of checking the “character and personality” of all the players. Southgate reiterated his sympathies for Ryan Bertrand and insisted the door was still open for Joe Hart if the goalkeeper found a new club next season and returned to form. Not so much Chris Smalling, though, after being excluded because Southgate wanted England’s center-halves to be better on the ball. “We made that decision in November and I’ve not seen any reason to change the thinking,” he said. For someone who was once considered too gentlemanly to make the really tough calls, Southgate has quietly taken a sledgehammer to a number of international careers. For that, there were no apologies, just the clear impression that he was happy with his choices and not willing to bend for anyone. “I was involved with Crystal Palace in 1990 [the FA Cup final] – Sir Alex Ferguson’s first trophy – when he took Jim Leighton out of the team and played Les Sealey in the replay. They were massive calls that I am sure he didn’t enjoy making but, if you think it is the right thing, you don’t do it for effect. You do it because it is the right thing and you have to make those calls.” The Guardian Sport