England manager Gareth Southgate. Photo / Getty
When Gareth Southgate was in the United States in February to attend the 52nd Super Bowl in Minneapolis he grasped the opportunity to take in a basketball match. It featured the Minnesota Timberwolves against the Milwaukee Bucks but Southgate was not there to munch popcorn and enjoy himself.
The England manager had an idea in his head as he took the train to the Target Center where the Timberwolves play - he wanted to talk to the team's owner Glen Taylor about how the NBA club operates but he also wanted to see, out on the basketball court, where it is five versus five, how players find space, and also the tactics that were being used to block off opponents in tight areas. A bit like, in fact, how footballers deal with corners and free-kicks.
Fast forward to last Sunday and observe how Ashley Young subtly, legally but clearly blocked off Michael Murrillo, the Panama defender whose duty it was to mark John Stones while his team-mates grappled with Harry Kane and Harry Maguire. Stones ran free and headed home Kieran Trippier's eighth minute corner in Nizhny Novgorod to set England on the way to their 6-1 victory.
Maybe it was a coincidence. But Southgate, his assistant Steve Holland and strikers coach Allan Russell have worked hard on England's set-piece routines at this World Cup. On match days the players even walk through the various scenarios and it seems highly unlikely that Southgate has not adopted some of the techniques he saw that night in Minneapolis.
More than any other England manager Southgate has deliberately gathered information from other sports - tactical, technical but also psychological - and applied them to football. That is from NBA and American football, where he has visited the Seattle Seahawks, New England Patriots and Minnesota Vikings, but also rugby union, cricket, athletics, boxing, swimming and even canoe slalom and short-track speed skating where Holland has spoken to Nicky Gooch, the coach of the Olympian Elise Christie.
Using such an approach is not new in football. Years ago Alan Pardew attended the Americas Cup to see how yacht crews operate on team-work and had a similar interest in Formula One where he looked out how pit-stops and tyre changes were co-ordinated. But no-one has done it to such an extent as Southgate and applied it so clearly to his management. For example he and Holland attended the UK Sports World Class Performance Conference where Southgate spoke but also took time to talk to the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes.
Southgate is also part of the current intake for UK Sport's Elite Programme, a three-year course, from which he is due to graduate next year, with fellow students including Mel Marshall, who coaches the Olympic swimming champion Adam Peaty and British Cycling's Paul Manning who is coach to Laura Trott.
Back to Southgate's visit to the Super Bowl in February, the second time he and a delegation from the Football Association which included chief executive Martin Glenn had attended the event, and the manager was extremely interested in how the teams were presented to the media. It is why the FA adopted a similar media day at the England base at St George's Park, before heading to Russia, in which every one of the 23 players were put up for interview at the same time in the futsal hall with a countdown clock in the middle which started at 45 minutes. The day was a resounding success.
Southgate was in America to attend a Leaders in Sport conference - going to the Super Bowl was part of it the week-long event - along with Sir Dave Brailsford, the general manager of Team Sky, who Southgate knows well, and Michael Cheika, the Australian rugby union coach.
It is well-documented that Southgate speaks to the England rugby union coach Eddie Jones, and he has been at training sessions held by Jones and vice-versa, and had a similar relationship with Jones' predecessor Stuart Lancaster who also visited St George's Park. A lot of this is encouraged by Dave Reddin, the FA's head of team performance and strategy, whose CV includes his role in England's's 2003 Rugby World Cup triumph and working with Team GB at the 2012 Olympics.
There was another simple idea, taken from rugby, from the New Zealand All Blacks, in fact, with Southgate instituting a ritual by which a decorated former player presents a debutant with his jersey in the dressing room before the match.
It reinforces just how much of an honour it is to represent your country and Ian Wright, for example, presented Tammy Abraham, Jordan Pickford, Joe Gomez and Jack Cork with their shirts before the friendly against Germany last year. Alan Shearer has also been invited in to speak to the squad although that, interestingly, developed into a discussion on the role of punditry and former players in the media.
It was a healthy debate that Southgate, who has worked as a pundit, enjoyed and felt was beneficial to the players and was another example of the open-mindedness he has taken to his job which has also been helped by the fact that he came up through from England Under-21 coach where he had more time with the players but was also able to be more innovative. That is already something he has translated to the senior squad - hence the 48 hours spent away with the Royal Marines at a get-together.
It is about managing people, issues, building psychological strength and team bonding. Southgate is a sponge when it comes to small margins, tactical gains and simply trying to think differently and England are benefitting from that. As was seen last Sunday.