Former England manager Gareth Southgate has admitted that Ruben Amorim is doing “pretty well” at Manchester United now after a difficult start to the 2025/26 season.
United started the season with just four points from their first four games, and after the 3-1 defeat to Brentford at the end of September, pressure mounted on Amorim.
Southgate was one of the names tipped to replace the Portuguese before Ineos and Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s public backing. It’s understood that Southgate is highly thought of by Ratcliffe, while Sir Dave Brailsford previously pushed for the former England boss to replace Eric ten Hag last year.
The 55-year-old has been jobless since he departed from the Three Lions over a year ago. During his tenure with England, Southgate guided the nation to two European Championship finals and the semi-final of the 2018 World Cup.
In a round of interviews on Monday morning to promote his new book ‘Dear England: Lessons in Leadership’, Southgate admitted in a chat with the BBC that he was in no rush to accept a new managerial role, before being asked on The Sports Agents podcast about the United job.
“The first thing is they’ve got a manager who seems to be doing pretty well at the moment,” he said. “But yeah, I’ve had 37-odd years in football. It’s been an amazing experience and if you told me as a 15-year-old that’s what would happen, then I’d have been absolutely delighted.
“But there’s other things in life. And having had the job I just had, where it was for my country, there was a bigger purpose than just the football. That’s really hard to replicate.
“Working with young people as part of what I do now, it doesn’t mean I’ve got ambitions to perhaps grow a business or work on leadership and other areas as well.
“But definitely there’s something in me to work around young people, perhaps because I’ve been working with that sort of age group as well recently, and I can see that there is a chance to make a difference and to give groups belief and to unite people a bit more.”
Speaking on BBC 5 Live Sport, Southgate added more clarity: “I haven’t seen it yet,” he replied when asked what job he would re-enter football for. After repeating the exact words from Amorim’s work recently, it was suggested that his answer “wasn’t an outright no” to the job, which he responded to with, “Well, it’s not an outright yes that’s for certain.”
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