European Championship 2024: Southgate vs Koeman, or the praise of imperfection

Interweaving, emotional intersections. Geographical and psychological Cartesian axes intertwine in the 'Nordic' semi-final of these European Championships. And to say that the 'Nordics' have not won the continental title since 1996, when Germany triumphed in England. In the semi-final, the Germans beat the English at Wembley on penalties, and it was Gareth Southgate who missed the decisive penalty and is now the (disputed) coach of the Three Lions. At Wembley, a few seasons earlier, Ronald Koeman had given his Barcelona team the Champions League against Vialli and Mancini's Sampdoria with a free kick. In the embrace between the two, on that same lawn, after the Euro 2002(1) victory, again on penalties and against Southgate's England, there was also the redemption of that bitter Doriana night, decided by that blond Dutchman who had already become European champion with his national team in 1988, and precisely on German soil. Images, entanglements, suggestions spinning faster than the ball itself.

The game is being played - Fortunately, the game is being played, which forces us to close the album of memories and fix our hearts and eyes on the grass, that of the Westfalen Stadion in Dortmund, which with Munich and Berlin has been the real capital of this European Championship. An intriguing challenge, the one between the tulips and the English, which, however, still harks back to the past, to that Van Basten who, precisely at Euro88, made three goals against the Queen's subjects (then, now the King's) to launch himself towards the throne of absolute protagonist of that continental review. Today, however, it is perhaps better to fix one's eyes on the benches, where two debated and silent leaders sit, but who nevertheless led their national teams to the threshold of the last continental ball.

The Real Normal One - The World Cup semi-final in 2018, the European final 2021, a quarter-final at Qatar22, a Nations League semi-final. Looking at them in a row, and even considering the inevitable ups and downs and the fluctuating quality of the game, the English national team led by Southgate is not doing so badly. Southgate, who has always done his part from a tactical point of view, even here at Euro2024, assembling a group that certainly does not enchant (but who, apart from Spain, has succeeded so far?), but which nonetheless shows a high degree of mutual technical-tactical tolerance, and a united dressing room despite the many tensions that the tough Premier League season reverberates within it. Paradoxically, the 53-year-old Watford-born coach seems to see his natural and human uncertainties amplified by a 'British' and institutional style that is ill-suited to the current times, and to the over-emphasised messianic climate that accompanies every footballing crusade of the Whites of England, forced by history and turnovers to put another precious metal in the trophy cabinet as soon as possible alongside the solitary world title won (at Wembley, needless to say...) in 1966. It would be significant if the team moulded by this Normal One, a profound scholar of sport at an international level, were to fill that gap (in 2018, his contacts and insights into the world of the US NFL, from which he learnt techniques and methodologies also useful for his task as technical commissioner, aroused great curiosity).

Without emphasis - A tough leader on the pitch at the time of his two careers, in a blaugrana and orange jersey, even Ronald Koeman had to redefine his role and prospects once he sat on the sidelines. And to say that prestigious benches (Ajax, Psv, Benfica, Barcelona) and some successes did not lack for him. But Koeman the player expressed a different aura and determination than Koeman the coach does today (accompanied in the role of deputy in this second adventure in the national team by his brother Ervin, who had been his companion on the pitch in the Orange's triumphant European ride in 1988). And yet, at 61 years of age and after overcoming even a few heart problems, Rambo (as he was nicknamed in our parts, precisely because of his character and shooting power) seems to have discovered the art of concreteness and measure, Launching a solid, hard-working Netherlands (an even more pressing need given the absences of Koopmeiners, De Roon and De Jong due to injury just a few days before the start of the European Championship), which certainly distances him from the aesthetic myths of the Clockwork Oranges that had their prophets in Cruyjff and Van Basten, but which finally makes him closer and more human. And perhaps even more successful. Southgate permitting.