Southgate finally proves he can throw some shapes on England’s dancefloor

Squint at the picture, tilt your head, let the magic-eye patterns settle, and the reason for Gareth Southgate’s quietly chipper mood in front of the cameras in the soft-finish underbelly of the Allianz Arena late on Tuesday becomes a bit clearer.

On the face of it the 1-1 draw with Germany in Munich was inconclusive. For the opening hour England were the more ponderous team. Germany were slick in short bursts, reconfigured by Hansi Flick to blitz-press high up the pitch and funnel the ball with an agreeable rat-a-tat speed through midfield.

For all that Southgate had, and these things are relative, a kind of bullishness about him at the end, shedding his default persona in recent months – rueful interim headmaster at an inspirational secondary academy – in favour of a faint but discernible friskiness.

The reason for this might get lost in the cacophony of resentment and grudge-tending that must follow any England game. In football, as in every other area of human life, positions tend to be set these days, heroes and villains enthroned in perpetuity. Half an hour after England had dug out a commendable draw in Germany #Southgateout was trending on social media. And not, it turns out, ironically.

This skein of hostility is in part a function of simple repetition. It has been six years now. Pick out five minutes, any five minutes, of Southgate’s England and you’ll know instantly what it is you’re watching: Southgate’s England, the same nicely turned substance, the same patterns, the same limits. At times this England team feel like a particularly well-made cardigan that flatly refuses to wear out or fray at the edges, thereby justifying a jazzier, sparklier, fast-fashion replacement.

But the fact is England did do something