Stating a preference for an English manager of the England football team is - obviously - not “borderline racist” or any other such nonsense, lest the sentiment be born of some weird footballing xenophobia: the conviction that only a suited tactician born within these isles might also harness the true spirit of the bulldog and baked beans.
Still, in the world of reason, succession planning for the possible departure of England’s second-most successful men’s manager of all-time has opened an interesting conversation. In an ideal world, every country on Earth would be managed by one of their own.
International football ought, by definition, to be a test of a nation’s footballing resources, competition (if not competitions) insulated against the billionaire whim that shapes the modern club game. As was smugly pointed out after each of Qatar’s dismal showings at a World Cup they paid more than $200billion to host: you can buy a tournament, but not a team.
The development of coaches, as much as players, is a central part of a footballing infrastructure - you do not get the latter without the former - and in the soul-searching post-South Africa 2010, you could not move for references to the dismal number of Uefa licensed coaches in England compared with the likes of Germany and Spain.
Hiring local is more sustainable than spending on names from overseas and look only at the recent success of Morocco and Senegal, all the more significant for being led by natives rather than their imported journeyman predecessors.
There seems some intangible benefit in cultural commonality between manager, players and fans, but in the specific case of England, do not underestimate the extent to which Gareth Southgate has raised a bar that will surely fall lower when he is gone.
As a player, Southgate bore the scars of personal tournament trauma and was almost uniquely placed to use his experience and humanity to unburden this generation. As statesman, on a wealth of national and social issues, Southgate emerged as a rare voice of sense and sympathy. Foreign coaches may not so easily occupy the same space, but which English manager appears capable of doing so either? Eddie ‘focus-on-football, head-in-the-sand' Howe? Not likely.
Until such time as homegrown managers become a requirement, the FA are not only entitled to explore foreign options but, in the interests of due diligence, pretty much obliged to. If Southgate’s successor will almost certainly be a downgrade as a fatherly man-manager then a substantial upgrade as a coach is required as the offset. There is little point replacing a good man with a worse one if he has the same perceived tactical shortcomings.
Hence the touting of elite but out-of-work club coaches in Mauricio Pochettino and Thomas Tuchel. England have been down that road twice before, with Sven Goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello, two characters who, beyond their non-Britishness, could hardly have been more different. Neither cracked it, but until Southgate, every English manager of the 21st Century met an end at least as abject.
The concept of nationality has moved on, too: neither Eriksson, nor Capello had ever worked in English football but Pochettino has now had a home here for almost a decade. Brendan Rodgers, the Northern Irish third-favourite for the job, has spent far longer in England than Phil Foden or Jude Bellingham.
The sample size for foreign failure in the impossible job, at two, is miniscule. More broadly, no non-native coach has ever lifted the World Cup, but how many have, with leading nations, been given the chance to try? Brazil and Germany have never been managed by a foreigner at a World Cup, Argentina, Italy and France only once each, most recently in 1954. The prophecy, however fruitful, is self-fulfilling.
Better than trends, the FA have, in their own employ, the perfect case study. Sarina Wiegman was brought in to turn a nearly-team into champions of Europe, having already done so with her native Netherlands, a task not dissimilar to that facing either Southgate or his successor ahead of Euro 2024. The comparison, though, is not perfect (Didier Deschamps, not Tuchel or Pochettino, would perhaps be the equivalent hire in the men’s game now) and it was interesting to hear Wiegman this week discuss her reservations over becoming the first permanent non-British coach of the England women’s team.
“I was head coach of the Netherlands, but my first thought was can I leave the Netherlands [as a country]? I grew up there, it’s my country,” she said.
“I thought, ‘If England want to appoint me, they need to know who I am’. I really wanted to share who I really am, what my vision is, how I work with people, how I think of training and things like that. If the FA would’ve said, ‘Hmm I don’t think you’re a fit with England’, then it would be fine. The other way around, too, I asked the FA about what they thought the future was.
“Those conversations went really well so I got really enthusiastic and I noticed the FA got really enthusiastic and then we finally got to an appointment.”
Wiegman was not simply the best coach available - she was also, irrespective of nationality, established as the best fit for the task at hand. Amid a paucity of options, native or otherwise, Southgate surely remains that, too.
