'Special' Southgate central to the future for in-limbo Boro

The plane taking Middlesbrough to Eindhoven for the Uefa Cup final is not due to depart until Tuesday morning. At the Riverside yesterday, though, there was an inescapable feeling of a football club very much up in the air.

It was hardly unexpected, of course, but Thursday's confirmation of Steve McClaren's impending departure for permanent national service has left Boro somewhat in limbo as they prepare for their big day, the biggest in their 130-year history. The big question, as the first-team returned from a two-day break to get ready for Wednesday night in the Philips Stadion, was not just how they might cope with their Sevilla test but also who might be holding the reins after McClaren's grand finale.

Given Steve Gibson's insistence that Gareth Southgate should play a significant role in the future scheme of things at Middlesbrough, the chances are that the veteran central defender will be helping to do some of the steering. In the wake of McClaren's appointment as England head coach in waiting, the Boro chairman described the club captain as "magnificent" and "special", and added that Southgate "would not be allowed to leave".

Gibson's rider that McClaren's replacement would "probably not" come from within the club, would point towards some kind of supporting role for Southgate in the new regime - working under an Alan Curbishley, a Martin O'Neill, a Paul Jewell, a Tony Mowbray, or perhaps even a Terry Venables, should the Football Association not grant McClaren his first choice for an overseeing mentor.

Four days away from the biggest club match of his 15-year career, Southgate could have been excused for seeming a little bewildered by the distraction of his name being stirred into the Middlesbrough melting pot. He does possess managerial ambitions, though, with his B-class coaching badge already in the bag and his A-level course to tackle this summer.

"It gave me a huge personal boost to hear the chairman talking about me in those terms," he said. "I will help this club in the future in any way they want. I'm contracted to play here for another year and I would think I'll be here next season as a player, but you never know. Obviously everything is up in the air at the moment. Thankfully we have something massive to focus on."

Sitting in the Ayresome Lounge, high up in the West Stand at the Riverside, Southgate's most immediate concern was his fight to be fit to lead Middlesbrough on the pitch in Eindhoven. Hamstrung in the early stages of the semi-final second-leg spectacular against Steaua Bucharest 10 days previously, he was happy to have resumed full training with no ill effects. "I'm confident I'll be fine for Wednesday," he said.

At 35, Southgate acknowledges that this final could be his last shot at a major honour. He does have a First Division championship medal (1994, Crystal Palace) and two League Cup winners' medals (Aston Villa 1996 and Middlesbrough 2004) but landing a European prize would be the most prestigious feather in the club cap of a player who won 57 international caps and who was one of Venables' nearly men semi-final shoot-out losers at Euro 96.

There could hardly be a more fitting recipient of a winner's medal in Eindhoven. After Venables had been brought to the Riverside to save Bryan Robson's struggling side from relegation, Southgate arrived from Aston Villa as the first signing of the McClaren era in the summer of 2001. He was the new manager's £6.5 million statement of intent and his model professionalism has been instrumental in Boro's rise from Premiership makeweights to European finalists.

Southgate's form at the heart of defence has seldom fallen short of supremely assured and when Boro's season was creaking at the seams in February it was his leadership in the dressing room that played the most vital part in pulling it together again. He has also been an inspiration to Boro's rich crop of emerging young players - not least Stewart Downing (below).

Southgate has taken the England hopeful under wing and fully expects, in his summer job as an ITV analyst, to be following his young colleague's progress at the World Cup. "I hope Stewart's done enough to get on the plane," he said. "He's a wonderful player. He can play at that level."

It was all very different in the opening weeks of the 2001-2002 season, when the new look Boro - with McClaren as manager and Southgate as captain - started with a 4-0 thrashing at home to Arsenal and four successive defeats in all. "The Arsenal and Aston Villa games this year were very tough," McClaren said, referring to the 7-0 hammering at Highbury and the 4-0 home defeat in which one fan hurled a season ticket at him. "But those first four games were the toughest. I'd done nothing and everybody pointed that out. That's where the chairman came in. He gambled on giving me the job then backed me with the support and the resources.

"You wouldn't have dreamed five years ago that Middlesbrough would be playing in a European final, with all the world watching. But this club is not coming to an end after the Uefa Cup final. This is a very attractive job here - an A-list job." It just remains to be seen who will get it.