England will end up hiring Graham Potter
Might stick a few quid on this, not sure why the FA insist England must have an English manager but hey-ho.
For no particular reason, I kinda prefer the manager of England to be English, though.
I couldn’t care less personally, foreign managers of national teams have been a thing since the beginning and why handicap yourself when others won’t do the same?
I think it’s the fault of Capello really, who was so foreign, quite cold, terse, with not a great command of the language, and hugely underperformed with squad cohesion (ie, the soft side of the job) being a failure of the team. Not that I’m putting all the blame on Capello… the media and the players all have to take some share of that. Also, his style was of his time.
I think if we had a warm and cuddly foreign manager with great English, like Klopp was when he first started at Liverpool (he’s a bit more jaded now), then the FA would consider it. Even if you’re a Southgate doubter, you can’t deny that he’s made such huge progress on squad cohesion.
He was until the 2010 tournament where he decided to ditch the tactics that brought us to the tournament and play a brexit 4-4-2 with Emile motherfucking Heskey up top. I’m still fuming about that 13 years later.
If England want to win a trophy it won’t be the manager who wins it, it will be the players. At the last Euros the squad was good, and maybe should have won, but they just didnt have the experience or the stature to take it all the way. Now there’s players like Kane and Bellingham, the best players at two of the biggest clubs in the world, and several Champions League winners in the squad they know how to win - the manager can be anyone who gives them the platform to take it on.
Potter failed to implement his tactics and philosophy at Chelsea despite working with the players every single day. What makes people think he would have the time to implement his tactics when he only gets to see his players for a week or 2 every couple of months? Teams that do well at national team level tend to go with basic football. Spain could play their intricate football because the majority of their team played together at club level too.
People seem to be forgetting how well he had Brighton playing prior to joining Chelsea, which is a tough assignment for any manager.
