Arise Sir Gareth: Ex-England manager gets knighthood

LONDON (AP):

Former England football manager Gareth Southgate has been given a knighthood in the New Year Honours list.

Southgate led England to two consecutive European Championship finals and the 2018 World Cup semifinals, making him the most successful incumbent since Alf Ramsey.

The 54-year-old Southgate, who left the role shortly after England’s defeat to Spain in the Euro 2024 final in July, became the fourth former England manager to receive a knighthood, after Ramsey, Walter Winterbottom, and Bobby Robson.

Former Wales and British and Irish Lions wing Gerald Davies was also knighted. He served as president of the Welsh Rugby Union.

Nine-time Paralympic champion Hannah Cockcroft, who has been made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), and Olympic 800m gold medallist Keely Hodgkinson, who becomes a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), are among stars of Britain’s Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic teams to have been honoured.

Athletics stars Katarina Johnson-Thompson, who won her first Olympic medal with heptathlon silver in Paris, and three-time medallist Dina Asher-Smith were made MBEs.

Alan Hansen, the former Liverpool great, got an MBE and David Moyes, most recently the manager of West Ham, received the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).

Dawn Astle, who set up the Jeff Astle Foundation to campaign for more research into head injuries in football on behalf of her father, who died of dementia in 2002, was made an MBE.

The awards given out by monarchs as part of orders of chivalry since the Middle Ages are now vetted by a government committee before being passed on to the prime minister and King Charles III.