‘notes Slid Under Doors’: Southgate Reveals England’s Traitors Obsession

Sir Gareth Southgate has revealed nan concealed cardinal to nan beardown enslaved forged by his England team: they spent their downtime playing The Traitors.

As nan federation waits to spot whether Joe Marler and company tin drawback nan duplicitous Alan Carr and Cat Burns successful nan last of Celebrity Traitors , Southgate has said his squad would consistently organise their ain type of nan crippled astatine tournaments and claimed it was among nan astir effective team-building exercises during his 8 years successful complaint of nan nationalist side.

Writing successful his memoir, Dear England, which is published connected Thursday, Southgate says nan craze for playing Werewolf – nan “social deduction” crippled which helped to animate The Traitors – began astatine nan Qatar World Cup successful 2022, pinch nan squad subordinate Conor Coady introducing nan crippled to his teammates.

“Thanks to Conor Coady, we besides had ‘Traitors’ to play – our type of nan celebrated TV game,” Southgate writes, pinch nan enthusiasm truthful precocious that personage visitors besides took part.

“All of nan players were involved, taking nan domiciled of either ‘traitor’ aliases ‘faithful’, and each spending their downtime engaging successful nan deception, trying to destruct their opponents aliases stay undetected. Even Robbie Williams joined in.

“Conor’s invention was truthful popular, successful fact, that successful early tournaments, specified arsenic Euro 24, nan wider unit started playing too,” Southgate writes. “Some colleagues took nan crippled incredibly seriously, pinch notes being slid nether people’s doors astatine nighttime and Marc Guéhi, nan boy of a minister, anguishing astir having to dishonesty if he was made a traitor!

It was awesome nosy and much effective arsenic a team-bonding workout than thing we could person formally designed.”

Southgate’s attraction to detail, his willingness to time off nary chromatic unturned successful hunting for improvements successful his team’s performance, is 1 of nan accordant threads successful nan book.

He unpacks astatine length, for example, nan study that led to England changing nan measurement they approached punishment shootouts: from managing nan clip betwixt last whistle and first footwear (evaluated by analysts arsenic a play lasting 3.5 minutes), to ensuring that nan goalkeeper ever passed nan shot straight to nan adjacent taker to limit interference and practising not only nan kicks but nan entirety of nan shootout successful training truthful arsenic to summation assurance and little pressure.

After implementing these changes successful Southgate’s first twelvemonth arsenic head England won their first shootout astatine a World Cup, beating Colombia successful 2018. They won 2 of 3 further shootouts nether Southgate.