Jude Bellingham has changed how history will view Gareth Southgate

A nation’s performance at a major tournament is not remembered for how it starts, but how it ends.

Jude Bellingham has not only saved the Gareth Southgate era. He has almost certainly changed how history will remember it.

Regardless of how England secured their Euro 2024 quarter-final place, Southgate could not have wished for a better chance to preserve and enhance a legacy which until Bellingham’s injury-time equaliser against Slovakia looked like it would be blackened.

For 95 minutes, it looked like one tournament too far for the England coach. Now a quarter-final against Switzerland represents a shot at redemption. In the eyes of many England supporters, Southgate and some of his players can go from zero to hero.

Heading into the last eight, Southgate must still feel like he has everything to prove despite his previous accomplishments. If there is one final plea to him from the nation, it is that he grasps the nettle, fixes the glaring issues with the team’s balance and maximises the good fortune which has fallen his way. We’ve been saying since day one there are too many attacking players dropping deep and occupying the same spaces between the lines and not enough running behind defenders. It is perplexing that has not been changed.

Regardless of how underwhelming all of the performances to date have been – including the win over Slovakia – we cannot avoid the basic facts. For the fourth consecutive tournament, Southgate has led the squad to a position where they can win it.

Reaching the latter stages again means he has never failed to at least reach a quarter-final since taking charge before the 2018 World Cup. Southgate has eclipsed every previous England manager in terms of the consistency of the team’s showing at major tournaments.

Despite that, a poll among fans and pundits as to where Southgate should be ranked in the list of England coaches would make informative reading. Sir Alf Ramsey would obviously be top by virtue of winning the World Cup, but I would not be surprised if Southgate was rated below Bobby Robson, Terry Venables, Sven Goran Eriksson and maybe even Glenn Hoddle. We can only speculate how low his stock would have dropped had England not found a way past Slovakia.

I find myself defending Southgate a lot. I am not a friend of the England manager and have no wish to be accused of being his PR man when trying to understand and explain the logic behind many of his decisions. It is simply my view that he has done far more right than wrong in the job, and some of the analysis of his management disregards the massive differences between international and club football.

But the further England progress, the more one of the most repeated criticisms of Southgate comes to the fore.

The shadow of the Euro 2020 final looms large. It is the stick most often used to beat the England manager – the fixture which his critics suggest typifies his overcautious approach.

All the pieces were in place for England to end their wait to win a major tournament at Wembley three years ago; a home game in front of a passionate crowd against an Italy side who were equally – possibly even more – pragmatic than England.

In the aftermath of the penalty defeat, familiar claims were made against England, and Southgate in particular; he is too defensive when the team go ahead, preferring to sit back and counter-attack rather than go for the jugular, and does not maximise his use of substitutes.

England did not lose the Euro 2020 final because they were tactically unadventurous. They lost because they failed to execute a perfectly sound counter-attacking strategy well enough when they had the advantage, unable to take advantage of numerous opportunities when Italy were at their most vulnerable.

The same frustrations about negativity were expressed after the matches against Serbia and Denmark. Again, I disagreed.

The bad moments in those games were not due to a conservative style. It could be argued England’s flaws in those games were a consequence of being too adventurous, picking too many attacking players of similar profile.

If anything, Southgate has been much bolder than usual since the day he named his England squad.

The decisions taken with the inclusion of youngsters such as Kobbie Mainoo and Cole Palmer struck me as those of a new, not outgoing, England manager. It was like Southgate was already thinking about the make-up of the squad for his successor.

Experimenting with the line-up, with Trent Alexander-Arnold as a midfielder, followed a similar theme. Whether you agreed or not, nobody can deny these were brave choices.

Against Slovakia, those who are arguing leopards do not change their spots found much more to support their argument, especially as England faced their most humiliating defeat since Iceland.

There is no doubt the manager used his ‘get out of jail’ card when Bellingham dug England out of a hole. The hesitation in making changes was baffling, and, even when ahead in extra time, the team dropped too deep and invited pressure. Lessons must be learnt in order to beat the Swiss and beat stronger sides in the semi-final and final.

England fans know better than any how quickly and radically perceptions of a tournament and the national coach can change.

For the past month, everything England and Southgate have done has taken me back to the Bobby Robson era in which judgments of his most successful tournaments were based solely on what happened in the team’s last match.

Robson is rightly hailed as a great of English football, but going into his final major tournament his overall record in the national job was terrible, especially in the Euros. England failed to qualify for the European Championship in 1984 and lost all three group games in 1988, despite a team containing John Barnes, Gary Lineker, Chris Waddle, Tony Adams and Peter Beardsley in their prime. You cannot see players of that calibre and convince me the accusation of “wasting an opportunity with generational talent” is anything new.

Robson’s World Cups were defined by the unlucky defeats against the winners in 1986 and 1990, Argentina and West Germany. Those losses erased the darker memories of how inconsistent and, at times, mediocre England were earlier in those competitions, the only victories coming against nations you expect us to beat. Interestingly, Robson made major changes to his line-up or formation as those tournaments progressed. He was forced to revamp his midfield in 1986 because of injuries and suspension to Bryan Robson and Ray Wilkins, and reverted to three centre-backs and wing-backs in 1990.

England’s players returned from Italy as heroes because it was so long since the country had reached a semi-final.

Southgate will not have that luxury if he loses, no matter what the circumstances.

It means there is little time for celebrating after beating Slovakia. Southgate may not care too much about how future generations will speak about this period of the national team. The good news for him is the final chapter is still to be written.