Description
Taking over in 2016, Southgate has presided over a changing England set up, whose brand has increasingly come into contact (conflict?) with the media spectacle of global politics. From Brexit/Trump, through #MeToo, Black Lives Matter and even international military conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine, the England manager has regularly spoken of his desire to learn, reflect and lead on the ethical responsibilities of football. This paper maps the critical possibilities and limits of Southgate’s everyday ethical praxis in terms of his stated commitments to mental health, anti-racist politics, the continued rise of LGBTQ agendas in football and the encouragement of humility within English national identity. Two literatures provide insight on the marketized limits of this blurring between sport and ethics; first, the critical literature on brand and the commodification of values like humanitarianism and environmentalism; and second, the conservative social theory associated with Christopher Lasch’s culture of narcissism among professionals. While sympathetic to the popular relay of such arguments, that Southgate is a virtue signalling brand manager, who ultimately provides an apology for business as usual, the paper draws out the aesthetic promise of renewal in James Graham’s play Dear England.
