England against the world: Are players embracing a ‘siege mentality’?

It was a surprise to hear Jude Bellingham, making a rare media appearance after being named man of the match in England’s 2-1 win over Slovakia, talking about a “pile-on”.

Bellingham is one of the most lauded young footballers in the world and had just produced a moment that will be remembered as one of England’s best in this competition — but he had something very different that he wanted to get off his chest.

“You hear people talk a lot of rubbish,” he said. “It’s nice that when you deliver you can give them a little bit back.”

When asked to clarify what he meant by “rubbish”, Bellingham said that sometimes “it feels like there is a bit of a pile-on” and that “for moments like that it is nice to throw it back to some people”.

This was only a few minutes after the final whistle, so Bellingham was still very much in competitive mode. Even so, it was slightly jarring.

There has been barely any criticism of Bellingham at this tournament. There were a few — always nuanced, ultimately encouraging — pieces after the Slovenia game, which Bellingham had struggled to influence. Wayne Rooney said he thought Bellingham looked frustrated and was worried he might get a red card against Slovakia, but it was all fairly restrained.

It was also a surprise to hear Bellingham talk like this because positivity with the media has been one of the great triumphs of the Gareth Southgate era, with players encouraged to talk openly about what playing for England means to them. The FA’s goal was to “shift perception to aid performance”, and it has worked.

But at this European Championship, things have moved in the other direction. Rather than being proactive and setting the agenda, England players have often been on the defensive, responding to criticism of poor performances. Take Harry Kane’s press conference in Blankenhain on June 23 to respond to Gary Lineker’s criticism of the Denmark performance, or when Declan Rice hit back at suggestions England were not fit enough to press high.

It is a change of tone and dynamic.

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It was instructive to hear Gary Neville, a veteran of five major tournaments as an England player and another three as a coach — including Euro 2016, when relations with the media were far worse than they are now — discussing this after Slovakia. 

“They’ve started to sound like England players of the past, referring to outside criticism,” Neville said on ITV. “Lads, get your innocence back. Get your love for tournament football back. Nobody wants you to lose here. They’ve started to listen to things that are happening externally.

“But nobody’s been criticised personally, nobody’s questioning their character, no one’s said they’re not working hard. All we’ve said is they’re not playing football very well. The football criticism is fair criticism.”

All of which raises the question: is there a ‘siege mentality’ in the England camp?

To get a sense of how unusual the last few weeks have been, you have to go back to 2016, and a story told in Jonathan Northcroft and Rob Draper’s excellent book Dear England about an FA meeting following the humiliating defeat to Iceland. Technical director Dan Ashworth pointed out four areas that needed to be fixed for the national team to succeed: culture, psychology, playing style, and communications/media.

In March 2017, when England had their first camp after Southgate got the job permanently, the manager led a presentation to the players at St George’s Park called ‘Time for Change’. It culminated in Southgate telling his players that they could “write their own story, a new story”. For Southgate and the FA, it has always been about giving the players agency and allowing them to confidently tell their own stories.

This led to initiatives at the 2018 World Cup, where the squad played darts with members of the media at their training base, and, more importantly, spoke from the heart about their journeys and what it meant to them to be playing for England on the biggest stage. England were rewarded with their best World Cup campaign since 1990.

It felt like a virtuous circle: England players spoke well, performed well, and were lauded for both. They reached the final of Euro 2020 and were unfortunate to go out in the quarter-finals in Qatar. The good energy of the camps stayed broadly the same. Players were positive and optimistic. They talked about how much they looked forward to these moments — a far cry from the nervousness that used to hang over the national side.

There have been bumps in the road — some fans booing players taking the knee in a friendly before the last Euros, plenty of jeers for Southgate when England were beaten 4-0 by Hungary at Molineux in June 2022, and a few more in Milan after a Nations League defeat against Italy three months later — but, in the main, any public unhappiness has been directed at Southgate himself rather than the players, which is how he would prefer it.

England fans vent their anger at Gareth Southgate after the Slovenia game (Stu Forster/Getty Images)

But in Germany, England are existing in what Southgate has called an “unusual environment”.

The team have reached the quarter-finals but the performances started poorly and have deteriorated further. If Bellingham’s overhead kick had not flown in, then the players would be on the beach by now, the rest of us most likely waiting for an FA statement confirming Southgate’s departure.

The external noise has been very different from what we have seen in previous tournaments. There were the plastic cups thrown at Southgate in Cologne, the questioning of his decision to bring on Ivan Toney in Gelsenkirchen. Even before that game, when Southgate’s name was read out, he received a mixed reception from England fans in the ground.

Southgate has always wanted to be the lightning rod for criticism to protect his players. He even said in March that he did not want to sign a contract before Euro 2024 in case a backlash distracted his team from the job at hand. But that has not been fully possible when some of the criticism has been for the players themselves. Especially when it achieves as much cut-through as Lineker saying on his podcast that England were “s***” against Denmark, a remark that caused widespread consternation throughout the England camp.

Gary Lineker’s criticisms went down badly within the England camp (Tom Dulat/Getty Images for Premier League)

The key question is how the players respond to all this new external noise around them. Only the oldest among them — Kane (30), Kyle Walker (34), John Stones (30) — have experienced anything like this at international level.

The official line has been clear enough: ignore it.

Walker, the England vice-captain, said the day before the Denmark game that he is avoiding at social media and is cutting himself off from the outside world.

“I don’t look at anything,” Walker said. “I’m in here, and this is the only little bubble. When you start listening to outside noise, or good press and bad press, it affects different people in different ways. If I don’t read it, I don’t react.”

Southgate said on the eve of the Slovenia game that there is “nothing to be gained from us listening to external criticism”.

But the reality is that the players are keenly aware of what is being said, at least in part because they are so often asked about it. That is obvious from comments from Bellingham and Kane. “What ex-players who are pundits now have got to realise,” Kane said two weeks ago, “is it is very hard not to listen to it now, especially for some players who are not used to it or some players who are new to the environment.”

As much as they might say they are in a bubble, the players are not on any sort of digital detox. During the 2018 World Cup, they used to watch videos of fans wildly celebrating their wins back at home. For this tournament, they know the reaction is quite the opposite.

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So can we categorise what we are seeing from England as a ‘siege mentality’?

Well, that depends on your definition. If by ‘siege mentality’ you mean cutting off all dialogue with the media — as England teams have done in the past, most notably at Italia ‘90 — that is not the case. Between five and seven England players speak to the media every day if you include the FA’s own Lions’ Den show. After a game, nine or 10 players will speak, and every member of the squad apart from Luke Shaw — whose fitness has been a source of much debate — has spoken during the tournament.

The FA’s messaging to the players has been entirely consistent with how it has been at other tournaments, with the exception of penalties. At previous tournaments, England players often went into revealing detail about how they were practising penalties. At Euro 2024, the FA has stepped in when questions have turned to penalty strategy, believing that it is not helpful for the players to be discussing hypothetical scenarios or to be thinking about penalties days before a knockout game.

What if we take a sports psychologist’s understanding of ‘siege mentality’ instead?

Leading psychologist Dan Abrahams — speaking generally, rather than about England specifically — says that a siege mentality is “a call for energy, a call for readiness, a call for alertness”.

“It is having a shared mentality around negative thinking,” Abrahams says. “You use that and harness it to execute with as much intensity as possible, and as much activation as possible. It is to drive the focus and attention. A team can agree that the outside world is against them, so they create a narrative, a language, across the team that they can share and they can reinforce together, which ultimately drives attention, intensity and intent of behaviour and of actions.”

Abrahams believes that adopting such a mindset can have a positive impact — “It can help drive awareness, anticipation and decision-making” — or a negative one. “It actually hinders and distracts,” he adds. “So it doesn’t help players attune to their playing environment”. But, ultimately, he sees a ‘siege mentality’ as a choice, a tactic, a way for players to try to get an edge in a competitive environment.

“Everything I have described can come under the banner of instrumental aggression,” he says. “A team can try to find a way to perform more aggressively to impose themselves on their environment and opponent.”

Gareth Southgate has overhauled the England culture (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)

Modern players often seem influenced by the way Michael Jordan talked in the Last Dance documentary series, in which he talks about choosing to take criticism personally so he could turn it into motivation to win. There was a sense of that in Bellingham’s comments in Gelsenkirchen, where he talked about “using” the criticism, and how “you do have to take it personally a bit”.

Southgate seemed to sense that Bellingham sees things differently from older players when he said that night that Bellingham is “still a young man, he’s going to say things and react to things in a way that young people will”.

Maybe this is just the reality for the next generation of players. Anthony Gordon also talked about trying to use the criticism in a positive way.

“If people are being negative it’s only because they expect a lot from you,” he said last week. “If we want that to stop, we just need to perform and give people what they want to see.”

Or maybe it is much simpler than that. England, having broadly played well in their last three major tournaments, have played badly at Euro 2024. They are being criticised. And they are being asked about that criticism. Perhaps it is not so much a change of policy or mentality, but simply one of performance.

If they played better — starting with Switzerland on Saturday — the questions would stop. There is still time to recreate that positive 2018 feel.

Additional reporting: Dan Sheldon

(Top photos: Getty Images; design; Eamonn Dalton)