Gareth Southgate's selection headache

Category : Products

Here’s England manager Gareth Southgate using one of three Aston Stealth microphones to share his thoughts on leadership, success and the challenges of holding a high-profile position at the very top of football’s pyramid.

The Stealths were deployed by producer Tom Griffin for an episode of ‘The High Performance Podcast’. Southgate was interviewed by sports broadcaster Jake Humphrey and leading organisational psychologist Professor Damian Hughes for the series, which examines the experiences, motivations and leadership qualities of high-achieving individuals.

By taking England to the semi-final of the 2018 Word Cup and the final of the year-late 2020 Euros, Southgate has become England’s most successful manager since Sir Alf Ramsey steered the team to World Cup victory in 1966. Unlike Sir Alf, Southgate has had to pick his squads and playing XIs in the glare of unprecedented scrutiny of his every decision, by millions of fans on social media, most of whom seemingly believing they could do a better job.

Debates rage regarding 3-5-2 and 4-2-3-1 formations, which of a glittering array of forwards should flank Harry Kane in attack and whether Shaw or Trippier should occupy the left-back berth. But what we want to know is which of Stealth’s ‘back four’ Gareth was using to capture his famously eloquent responses in the interview?

We’re referring, of course, to Stealth’s unique four voices. Think ‘four professional microphones in one’. There’s no modelling going on here, but a choice of high-class discrete signal paths. Our guess is that the England manager’s dulcet tones would have been best suited to V1 (vocal 1) or perhaps the slightly brighter V2, for a little extra ‘bite’. Certainly ‘G’ would have been a surprising choice (it stands for ‘Guitar’, not ‘Grealish’) although any of Stealth’s voices–V1, V2, G and D for ‘Dark’–can be used on any sound source; most users find that if it sounds good, go with it.

During the podcast Southgate talks of his “Never-ending quest for perfection.” We’re down with that. We haven’t made the perfect mic yet but many people seem to think Stealth is pretty close. And we’re happy sticking to building great mics and to let Gareth Southgate continue doing a great job picking the England team (but we’d definitely play Grealish, and play Shaw at left back, in a 3-4-2-1).