Gareth Southgate Quits as England Coach, Leaving Team He Remade

Gareth Southgate, the manager who has overseen the most successful period in the recent history of the England men’s soccer team, leading his side to two major finals and steering its response to both the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, said on Tuesday that he had stepped down from his position.

In a message published on the website of the Football Association only hours after he and his squad returned to England as Euro 2024’s beaten finalists, the 53-year-old Southgate confirmed that the defeat to Spain in Berlin would be his final game after eight years in charge.

“It has been the honor of my life to play for England and to manage England,” he wrote. “It has meant everything to me, and I have given it my all. But it’s time for change, and for a new chapter.”

Southgate, who made more than 50 appearances for England as a player, joined the national team program in 2013, serving initially as manager of the country’s under-21 team. Three years later, he took over the senior team after Sam Allardyce was fired. Southgate was originally appointed on a temporary basis as the F.A. searched for a permanent successor.

That choice would turn out to be Southgate, whose eight years in charge make him the longest-serving manager of England’s men’s team in more than three decades. He can also claim to be the most consistently successful occupant of that role — once described as the second-most important job in the country, behind prime minister — since Alf Ramsey, the man who led England to its first, and only, World Cup in 1966.

Under Southgate’s softly spoken care, England reached the semifinals of the 2018 World Cup, the final of Euro 2020 (held in 2021) and, last week, the final of Euro 2024. For a while, it also turned Southgate — known during his time as a player for missing a penalty kick during a shootout in the semifinals of the 1996 European Championship — into a national treasure.