In the typically modest mode we’ve come to associate with Sir Gareth Southgate he began the prestigious 2025 Richard Dimbleby Lecture by paying homage to some of the speakers who had gone before him, as he said, princes and presidents. Unlike many of those earlier speakers Southgate had ended his formal education long before Oxbridge or any other university. His was a football apprenticeship experiencing the highs of being picked for Southampton at 13 years old and the lows as he was dropped two years later. He struggled to get back into professional football but determination took him to Crystal Palace at 16 years old where his manager at the time told him “you’re a nice chap, if you were my son I’d be proud, but actually you are weak and you’re not cut out to be in the first team.” 

Obviously, Southgate proved him wrong and he went on famously to play for England, miss a deciding penalty, experience vilification and hatred on a national level only to keep going, keep believing in himself and with the utmost resilience returned years later as a very successful England manager. Perhaps, despite what many football fans like to believe, one of our best.

When I asked our decorator, both a caring family man and a self-proclaimed follower of Russell Brand’s philosophy, what he thought of Southgate he pondered for a while – he seemed reluctant to even have a view – but finally said, “well he looks weak doesn’t he?” He then compared him with ‘real leaders’ like Putin whom he admired for excelling at Taekwondo and sitting bare-chested on a horse. His dismissal of Southgate was complete when he said, “who knows if England needed him? Perhaps they’d have got that far without him.”

Southgate’s lecture revolved around the need for different and better leaders specifically for young men. It pointed to the sense of isolation of the ‘Lost Boys’ of the Centre for Social Justice, who recently reported that in the UK 2.5 million children have no father figure at home. Southgate was making a plea for more positive role models, mentors, outside the immediate family – coaches, youth workers, teachers – as he believes the void is currently filled by a new type of role model: ‘callous, toxic influencers’ on social media who only have their own, often commercial, interests at heart. He didn’t bother to name Jordan Peterson, Adin Ross, Sneako or Hamza Ahmed, but they, alongside the infamous Tate brothers, were clearly front of mind. Influencers whose misogynistic views have gained millions of followers in the UK.

Nor did he mention by name the current leader of the free world either. Arguably the most powerful parental figure. But Southgate’s argument flows. If this global father figure famously believes it’s ok to boast about ‘grabbing pussy’, and to publicly humiliate other world leaders (Zelenskyy, Biden for example), then what hope for boys beginning to wonder about how to find a place in the world and make their mark with respect?

It was a powerful lecture, funny, self-deprecating, deeply thoughtful drawing as it did on Southgate’s personal determination to change the culture of the England men’s football team when he was manager. He put an emphasis on the team connecting, communicating and expressing difficult feelings. He put in as team captain and deputy Harry Kane and Jordan Henderson as he believed they were role models off the pitch as well as on it. The lecture raises important questions about why courtesy and decency, especially if wrapped up in the quietly spoken, can seem weak and might be rejected as leadership material. Why young boys seem currently more likely to turn to the brash ‘authority’ of men whose world view is of dominance and financial superiority.  

Southgate’s Dimbleby Lecture was broadcast days after Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s Adolescence started making waves. They are singing from the same hymn sheet as Femi Koleoso of 2025 Brit Award winning Ezra Collective. Koleoso credited youth clubs as playing a huge part in getting him started and is eloquent in making a strong connection between demise of those clubs and the rise in knife crime and that same sense of isolation of which Southgate spoke.

How Southgate aimed to change the philosophy of the England men’s football team is also played out in James Graham’s hugely successful play, Dear England. It has just returned to the National Theatre in an updated form. Sadly, no 2024 win in the Euros as its new conclusion but it is a wonderfully entertaining amplification of the Southgate philosophy. I would highly recommend a trip alongside listening to the 2025 Richard Dimbleby lecture. Neither may not seem an obvious choice for psychotherapists, counsellors and coaches but especially in Southgate’s lecture there is much to learn and consider which can help us understand our clients in the rapidly changing world of social media. Southgate, like Thorne, Graham and Koleoso are helping to move the dial and extend the possibility of hope in a part of society that can often feel as if it is sliding into hopelessness.