Gareth Southgate England penalties play to star Joseph Fiennes

FA confirm Gareth Southgate to stay on as England manager

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Gareth Southgate has been England’s manager since 2016 when the men’s national football team were at their “absolute lowest ebb” amid an “existential crisis about why we’d lost our way.” Those are the words of playwright James Graham whose new play Dear England will examine “the identity of a football team and the country”. The theatrical production’s name is taken from the open letter written by Southgate to fans in 2021, when he addressed the “ghosts and demons” of the past.

Speaking with the BBC, Graham said: “I think what has happened to the men’s England football team over the past six years has been quietly extraordinary. It’s been humming along in the background, but we’re only starting to really understand now Gareth’s gentle revolution.”

As England’s new manager, Southgate was assisted by psychologist Pippa Grange by beginning to “ask big questions about identity”, which included how the team could unshackle themselves from England’s terrible penalty shoot-out legacy.

Graham continued: “What makes it Shakespearean obviously it goes back to his moment in [Euro] 1996, when he felt all the weight of that history and the pressure and expectations on the moment that he missed that penalty. Cut to 22 years later, he is the one who breaks the penalty curse for the English football team, allowing them to win a World Cup penalty shoot-out for the first time.”

Harry Kane and Marcus Rashford are yet to be cast, but talking of the Tudor playwright, Shakespeare In Love’s Joseph Fiennes will star as Southgate himself.

Graham added: “Joseph is one of our great actors, and he hasn’t been on stage for a while,” Graham said. We sort of joked together – him, me and the director – that your return to stage would normally be Henry V or King Lear, not Gareth! But I do think it has that scale, that epic quality, his journey, in the unlikely figure of Gareth Southgate. I hope that’s what drew Joseph to the part.”

Dear England will run at the National Theatre from June 10 to August 11. Tickets go on sale on March 9 and can be booked here.

SOURCE: BBC

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