Almost as soon as Lee Carsley left the wet Wembley pitch on Tuesday night, after embracing his players and saluting the fans, his thoughts turned to October.
This has been a whirlwind 10 days for Carsley, his first international camp in interim charge of the England men’s team. Two games, two good wins, two clean sheets. Three England debuts, 100 caps for Harry Kane and one media storm about Carsley’s patriotism successfully negotiated.
But in three weeks’ time Carsley will be back announcing his next squad, before hosting Greece here at Wembley on October 10 and then flying to Helsinki two days later. And that England squad will not look like this one. Even before he spoke to the media on Tuesday night Carsley was thinking about October, about the players who will be newly available to him, about the need to freshen up this group, and which players will have to miss out. How he fits in Phil Foden, Jude Bellingham and Cole Palmer will be one of next month’s biggest questions.
Carsley is already juggling different goals. His first priority is to get out of the Nations League B set, which means winning this group. Two wins from two games is the perfect start. Next time England will have to do it again. He knows that the bigger prize is the World Cup qualification campaign, starting in either March or June 2025. “It’s important that we’re in a strong position,” he said on Tuesday night.
Hearing Carsley think out loud about all this, it was hard not to conclude that he sounds like an England manager already. He has been very careful this week not to sound presumptive about whether he will get the permanent job. He knows it is an honour to be in this position. He spoke about the heavy sense of “responsibility” and “pressure” he feels to get the most out of these players, helping them to play their best football on the biggest stage.
He does not take this work at all lightly. Again he was there taking the warm-up drills just before kick-off, stood out in the rain rolling balls into the rondo in the middle of the pitch, looking as committed as ever to the nuts and bolts of coaching.
This home win was a far less dramatic occasion than England’s trip to Dublin. That game, or rather the whole weekend, showed the unique challenges of what people used to call ‘the Impossible Job’. Not just a hostile away atmosphere but plenty of thorny non-football issues, from dual nationality through to whether or not Carsley will sing the national anthem before the game. And yet Carsley emerged from it with dignity intact and reputation enhanced.
Politics, scrutiny and difficult questions are a big part of international management. But so is setting up a team to deal with a compact low block opponent on a sedate, rainy night at Wembley. International football throws up at least as many games like this as it does like Saturday in Dublin, where the crowd is on top of you and the players need no extra motivation. This is the reality of being in the Nations League B section: England host Greece in October and Ireland in November. Plenty of their World Cup qualifiers will look like this too.
It was always going to be a test of England’s brains and patience, and they came through it. Trent Alexander-Arnold, England’s first-choice right-back for the first time in his career, was brilliant, playing some beautiful passes throughout. He was involved in both second-half goals and England look better for having him in the team. Angel Gomes was brave and intelligent on the ball, rewarding Carsley’s trust, and giving a glimpse of the football Carsley wants this team to play. Noni Madueke, another Carsley pick he knows from the Under-21s, was dangerous against tired legs and made the second goal.
Two games is not enough time to make a judgement on the manager. But the fact is that HMS Carsball is now launched and sailing in the right direction. It has some different qualities from its predecessor: Alexander-Arnold inverts so Declan Rice can go box-to-box. Anthony Gordon runs in behind from the left. Attacking positions are interchanged to find a way through. Whether Gordon and Jack Grealish survive the returns of Foden and Bellingham will be the decisive question of next month. Watching this team starting out makes you want to see what they do next.
Of course Carsley has only been given the job on an interim basis, initially for this camp, with a view to doing the October and November camps as well. Until he is permanently confirmed in the role the public will wonder if anyone else has a chance of getting the job. For the FA, their recruitment process is still running in the background, even while Carsley is sitting in the main chair.
But equally that process is being conducted in a private and discreet way, to put it mildly. The FA has not yet sat down and spoken to any of the leading external candidates for the job, leaving some wondering what exactly the ongoing process constitutes. (The FA declined to comment on this.) The work that is being done, led by John McDermott and Mark Bullingham, involves thorough due diligence on possible names before the FA interviews anyone.
This FA succession plan was drawn up even before the Euros, in the knowledge that there was always a possibility that Gareth Southgate would leave at the end of the tournament. Southgate did indeed step down after England lost the final in Berlin; the plan is now being enacted. And these are still relatively early days: the closing date for applications to be the new head coach was still less than six weeks ago. Carsley was only announced as being in interim charge one month ago. The FA still has plenty of time on its side, if it does want to run a long, competitive interview process.
Because at some point in the next few months McDermott and Bullingham will finally make their recommendation for the new head coach to the FA Board. And every assured step that Carsley takes from here, to Helsinki and Athens and back again, makes it likelier that the chosen name will be his.
(Top photo: Julian Finney/Getty Images)
