Defeat may be Southgate's last - but he'd leave England with head high

Gareth Southgate has taken us on one heck of a journey over the past eight years, but I suspect Sunday’s defeat by Spain will be his last game as England manager.

Right now Gareth will be hurting like hell after what happened in Berlin but my feeling is that, when the dust settles on the final of Euro 2024, he will decide he’s had enough.

It should be his decision to stay or go - and I think it will be - but it is a tiring job and he has been doing it for a long time.

If he does leave, he should go with his head held high because England are in a completely different place now compared to where they were when he took over in 2016.

England were at rock bottom after losing to Iceland and becoming a laughing stock that summer, followed by the embarrassment of Sam Allardyce’s exit after his short stint in charge.

Gareth came in and put a smile on everyone’s faces - bringing the squad together, getting us to the World Cup semi-finals in 2018 and then the final of the European Championship in 2021, with a lesser squad than he had this time.

He put the team in a much better position mentally and the spirit he nurtured helped us get to the final again.

For achieving all of those things he deserves a huge amount of respect and gratitude, but it’s just unfortunate that - for all his excellent work - Gareth just wasn’t quite able to get the best out of this team in Germany, and that was the difference between us reaching another final and winning one.

My guess is – and it is only a guess – he may now say to someone else that it is their turn to try to get England over the line.

If he does, then he has put the team in an excellent position for someone to take the team forward, to take that next step and win a major tournament.

A team of great moments, rather than a great team

Spain were the superior side, but I think we were all expecting more from England in Berlin.

For starters, Spain dominated possession, which they had not done in a lot of their games over the past few weeks. They play in a slightly different way now to the way they did when they had success in the past, but we sort of stood off them and allowed them to play at their own pace.

You can’t do that against a team with as many quality players as they have got, because they can hurt you. England found that out the hard way.

We got away with it for a while in the second half because Jordan Pickford made a great save when they were 1-0 up and they missed a couple of really good chances to put the game out of sight.

Then we got the changes from Gareth and an equaliser from one of the players who came on, and all of a sudden you are thinking hang on, here we go again. Another comeback… maybe, just maybe, another win.

We had come from a goal down to get through each knockout round on our way to the final, and being a team of great moments rather than a great team had got us this far.

It was not enough to derail Spain, however. They had deserved to win all six of their previous games at this tournament, and they deserved to win this one too.

They sliced right through the middle of us to score their winner and they dominated us the way they have dominated the competition.

Yes, we came close to nicking a second goal from a set-piece right at the end but, if we are being honest, we all know that Spain played the game the way that most people wanted England to play it, which is on the front foot.

We have to back our ability

No-one can ever question this England side’s attitude or commitment – like their togetherness, they have shown they have all of that in abundance – but they have not been able to play the right kind of football for most of this tournament.

We have seen glimpses of it, like in the first 30 minutes of the opening game against Serbia, or a similar spell in the first half of the semi-final against the Netherlands, but we have not really seen enough in any of the seven games we have played in Germany.

Our best spells in attack have come when we have reacted to something going wrong – in all four knockout games we have gone behind, which tells its own story.

Then, all of a sudden, we got slightly better when, in an ideal world, we would not have had to wait.

Finding a way to win is an impressive trait for any team to have, but it was not enough to take us to the trophy and of course that hurts.

We had a better squad than three years ago and, because of the expectation Gareth’s success has put on this England team, we expect them to win now.

If we are going to do that we are going to have to back our ability, the way Spain did against us when the game was in the balance.

Gareth made some more big calls and he got them right but, this time, Spain made decisive changes too.

When you are in a final, you have got to get over the line and they were the ones who did that. Unfortunately, we were not quite good enough to get the ending we all wanted this time.

Alan Shearer was speaking to BBC Sport's Chris Bevan in Berlin.