How ADELE helped Gareth Southgate through the heartache of leaving England job behind
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Former England manager Gareth Southgate has revealed he turned to music to help him deal with the heartache of leaving the job. The 54-year-old stepped down after eight years in the role following England’s 2-1 defeat to Spain in the Euro 24 final in July.
![[Southgate revealed that he regularly played Adele's 2011 hit Someone Like You towards the end of his tenure]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/21/23/93392059-14217811-image-a-87_1734823988414.jpg)
But it wasn’t football anthems Three Lions or Vindaloo that he listened to. It was a love song by Adele. Southgate, tipped to be knighted in the New Year Honours, says he played her hit Someone Like You on repeat after deciding to quit. On today’s Desert Island Discs he tells host Lauren Laverne: ‘I kept playing it towards the end of the Euros because I knew I was going to be leaving. I’d made my mind up.’.
![[Southgate applauding fans after England lost 2-1 to Spain in the final of the UEFA Euro 2024]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/21/23/93392273-14217811-Southgate-m-91_1734824238312.jpg)
In the 2011 hit, Adele sings: ‘Nothing compares, no worries or cares, regrets and mistakes, they’re memories made. Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?’. Gareth Southgate turned to music to help him through the heartache of leaving his role as England manager.
Southgate revealed that he regularly played Adele's 2011 hit Someone Like You towards the end of his tenure. Southgate says that even though the song is about the end of a love affair, it would remind him of his role with England whenever he heard it played.
‘There are so many of the words within it that, even if I hear it today, relate to my relationship with England and their relationship to me and how I feel about it all,’ he reveals. ‘They [the lover in the song] have got to move on, and you wish them the best and there are regrets, but they’re actually memories that were made.
