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Sports

Gareth Southgate: England contract extension an aim for Football Association

By : cd on 26 Jun 2021, 02:38     |     Source: bbcsport

Gareth Southgate

The Football Association would “love” Gareth Southgate to continue as England manager beyond the end of his contract “regardless” of the result in Tuesday’s Euro 2020 last-16 tie against Germany.

Southgate is under contract until after the 2022 winter World Cup in Qatar.

The 50-year-old steered England to the 2018 World Cup semi-finals and guided them to the Euro 2020 knockout stage.

“Our support is unwavering,” said FA chief executive Mark Bullingham. “We are 100% behind Gareth.”

“Gareth knows exactly how we feel about him,” Bullingham added.

“We feel he is brilliant, both on and off the pitch. We want him to carry on. He’s doing a great job. Regardless of Tuesday. Absolutely.

“Gareth has done a brilliant job, finishing top of the group, really solid defence, and he’s done really well on and off the pitch, in every aspect.

“We would love him to carry on, for sure, beyond this contract.”

Bullingham expects to hold “formal conversations” with Southgate over his contract after Euro 2020.

Southgate has won 36 of his 57 games in charge of England, a win rate of 63%.

Of managers who have taken charge of 10 games or more, only Fabio Capello has achieved a higher win rate of 66.7%.

On Tuesday, Southgate’s side will play in front of an expected 40,000 fans against Germany at Wembley Stadium.

It was confirmed earlier this week that 60,000 supporters will attend the semi-finals and final at Wembley after talks with Uefa about potentially moving the final away from London.

The increase will also see the largest crowds assembled for a sporting event in the UK in more than 15 months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It was definitely a real possibility of being moved,” Bullingham said. “The government were fantastic, working really close with them and Uefa we got to a really good position.

“It has had to come and had to balance public health all the way through that but we came to a sensible decision.

“We always said that we wanted the Euros to provide the platform for next season.

“We are hoping we can do it really safely and all the evidence so far from the research programme (suggests) that we are not causing any significant outbreaks for anything.”