Sterling-Gomez saga provides first stress test for Southgate’s feel-good England

The decision to discipline Raheem Sterling after a clash with Joe Gomez is a first major test for Gareth Southgate and the weight of the Liverpool-Manchester City rivalry on England’s squad unity.

Few expected Gareth Southgate, a man only appointed national team manager following a newspaper sting, to be the one to enact genuine change for England. So many before him had tried, and failed, to eradicate the toxicity that had over the decades prevented the Three Lions from realizing their potential and most of them had been better qualified for the job than Southgate.

Of course, we now know the 49-year-old has since gone on to become the most significant England manager since Sir Bobby Robson, not just taking his side to the semi finals of the World Cup in 2018 – their best showing at a World Cup since 1990 – but changing the mood of a whole country towards its national team.

Key to this dramatic turnaround was a positive mood within the England camp, not always a given in years gone by. That, however, now looks to be at risk.

News broke Monday of a clash between Joe Gomez and Raheem Sterling in England camp, just hours after the two had squared off in Sunday’s Premier League showdown between Liverpool and Manchester City.

Sterling reportedly tried to grab Gomez by the neck and said “you think you’re the big man now?” according to Sky Sports. The Man City winger was consequently ruled out of consideration for the upcoming Euro 2020 qualifier against Montenegro, though he will stay in the England camp.

Club rivalries, more than anything else, have destroyed England teams of the past. The country’s so-called ‘Golden Generation’ was compromised by the divisions carried into the national team dressing from the club game.

“It overshadowed things,” Rio Ferdinand, a key part of that ‘Golden Generation’ explained in a 2018 interview. “It killed that England team, that generation.

“One year we would have been fighting Liverpool to win the league, another year it would be Chelsea. So I was never going to walk into the England dressing room and open up to Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole, John Terry or Joe Cole at Chelsea, or Steven Gerrard or Jamie Carragher at Liverpool.

“I wouldn’t open up because of the fear they would take something back to their club and use it against us, to make them better than us. I didn’t really want to engage with them. I didn’t realise that what I was doing was hurting England at the time. I was so engrossed, so obsessed with winning with Man United. Nothing else mattered.”

In a Facebook post after the Sterling story broke, however, Ferdinand questioned the way Southgate handled the incident, asking why the issue couldn’t be handled internally.

Just last week, Southgate complained about England’s lack of players at the Premier League’s top clubs, but until now that has actually helped foster team spirit within the camp. Is it possible that the growing competition between Liverpool and Man City, the Premier League’s defining rivalry at this moment, could create the sort of division that has trashed so many England teams before?

It all depends on how Southgate’s decision to drop Sterling for the upcoming qualifier against Montenegro is viewed within the squad. Some leaks suggest there has been some disagreement over the manager’s call, with hints that some players would have preferred the issue to have been dealt with in-house as Ferdinand suggested.

Others might argue that Southgate has drawn a line in the sand in order to set a precedent for the future, to protect his squad from being infected by such toxicity again. Southgate has spent a lot of time and effort harnessing a healthy environment for his England players. It’s unlikely that he made his decision concerning Sterling’s behavior without this being at the forefront of his thinking.

On Tuesday, Southgate told the press:

"“I love all of my players. We are like a family and all families have disagreements. The most important thing for any family is that you communicate those disagreements and work through them. …“We have a very good understanding of the way that we have worked over the last couple of years, which has brought us a lot of togetherness that is still there.“We are a united group. Now we have to turn our focus onto the football. We have a hugely important qualifier to reach a European Championship. I’m speaking now because we are drawing a line under it and moving forward as a team.”"

Sterling is a leader within the England camp. He has even been talked about as a potential future captain. Therefore, it’s somewhat surprising that someone who has made himself something of a national icon in recent years, someone who absorbed all that was thrown at him to stand even taller, allowed himself to make such a mistake.

For his part, Sterling already issued an apology on social media, saying in part, “Both Joe and I have had words and figured things out and moved on. We are in a sport where emotions run high and I am man enough to admit when emotions got the better of me. … [W]e both understand it was a 5-10 second thing it’s done we move forward and not make this bigger than it is.”

And yet the fact that it is Sterling who has been made an example of is important. It has underlined for Southgate that anyone, no matter how experienced, can be consumed by the sometimes toxic energy of the club game. Whether or not he can continue to keep that influence from infiltrating the England dressing room could come to define his whole tenure as national team boss.

England will still qualify for next summer’s European Championships – the Three Lions need just a point on Thursday to secure their place with one match still to follow. It will take a lot more than just a training ground confrontation to stop them from getting the results they need against Montenegro and Kosovo to get over the line, but what happened between Gomez and Sterling has presented an unexpected crossroads.

The path now followed will either keep England on their upward trajectory or send them sliding towards the problems thought to have been left behind years ago.