The final voyage of HMS Carsball turned out to be the most triumphant of the lot.
England’s 5-0 win over the Republic of Ireland on Sunday evening meant that they won their Nations League group, completing the first task Lee Carsley set himself when he took over the team in August. At the final whistle at Wembley the big screens showed a picture of Carsley with the words ‘THANK YOU’, and as he hugged his players and staff on the pitch at the end he could reflect on a job well done.
Because he has done more than just guide England out of their group, but tried to make changes to the squad and the playing style to help his successor Thomas Tuchel, who takes charge in January.
Not everything has worked, but Carsley has never been afraid to try. On some points England are further advanced than they were three months ago. On others they are still searching in the dark. But when Carsley debriefs over the work of the last three months, first to John McDermott and then to Tuchel himself, he will be able to hand over a deeper, younger squad than the one he inherited.
This is the legacy Tuchel has been bequeathed; what he makes of it is a question for 2025.
A broader pool of players
In the last few days of his tenure, Carsley started to talk openly about one of his strategic goals for his six-game tenure: broadening the pool of England players.
It has been an obsession within the FA for years. As the percentage of English-qualified players in the Premier League has come down and down, any England manager has had fewer options to choose from. Gareth Southgate used to talk about this often.
But Carsley has succeeded in bringing more players into the England environment, meaning that when Tuchel takes over, there are more already-capped senior England internationals for him to choose from. It might have been easier for Carsley to just stick with the experienced heads for these six games. It would have increased England’s chances and meant less risk to Carsley’s reputation. No-one would have criticised him for playing it safe.
But instead Carsley gave eight debuts: Morgan Gibbs-White, Angel Gomes, Noni Madueke, Morgan Rogers, Lewis Hall, Curtis Jones, Tino Livramento and Taylor Harwood-Bellis. And plenty of young players who were given their debuts by Southgate — Rico Lewis, Levi Colwill, Ezri Konsa, Anthony Gordon and Kobbie Mainoo — were given continued trust by Carsley. (Carsley was frustrated he was unable to give debuts to Harvey Elliot and Jacob Ramsey too.)
The result is that the England team has had a radically different feel, with not just the Jude Bellingham generation coming through but a whole new generation younger than him. Harry Kane even spoke about the need to preserve the old team culture because the in-flow of new youngsters has been so dramatic.
Will Carsley’s Cohort and their style survive?
What unites so many of these new youngsters is that they played for Carsley and Ashley Cole for England under-21s. Many of them won the Euros with him last summer. They are personally loyal to Carsley and enjoy playing his more expansive, possession-based football.
The big question for Tuchel is whether he actually wants to use them or play this way. Tuchel’s incentives are fundamentally different from Carsley’s. He has an 18-month contract with a singular focus on the World Cup. The pathway of young players through the age-group teams and eventually into the seniors is not his concern. He is not coming to transform English football. His job is to coach one team for just over one year.
Given all that, it does not feel likely that he will want to build around Carsley’s Cohort. Why would he? In fact he could be at least as likely to call on the veteran players who Southgate did not even take to the last Euros. Jack Grealish and Harry Maguire, already back in the team under Carsley. Marcus Rashford and Mason Mount if they rediscover form. Ben Chilwell and Reece James if they get fit and play. Eric Dier, who he signed for Bayern.
When Tuchel was unveiled last month he said that he wanted to play “an attacking style of football” and that England “should try to emphasise a physical side of the game, because this is what English football is all about”. He did not sound like a man versed in the finer points of Carsball. What would that mean for an Angel Gomes or Curtis Jones in the middle of the pitch?
The Harry Kane question
Many people will write Carsley off as ‘just’ a nice guy, a safe pair of hands, a company man. But there is something to be said for his bravery too. One of his big achievements over the last few months has been starting to grapple with the Harry Kane issue. In short: is it always right to pick England’s greatest modern player?
This was a question that Southgate never dared to touch. Kane always played the big games. Even the final of Euro 2024, when Kane was clearly not himself, only lasting an hour before he was hooked.
But Carsley has realised that other strikers need to play big games, too. Carsley picked Jude Bellingham up front when England lost to Greece in October, when Kane was not fully fit. And in Athens last week Carsley shocked everyone — including Kane — by going for Ollie Watkins. It was one of the boldest selection gambles in England’s recent history, and it worked.
Kane showed on Sunday that he can do things no-one else can, changing the game with a brilliant diagonal pass to Bellingham that set up the penalty that he scored. His creativity, goal return and leadership are all huge upsides.
But there is a downside too, in terms of pressing and the runs that he does not make. Tuchel will know all this, having had Kane at Bayern last year. He loves Kane and will surely keep picking him. But if he does decide to go in a different direction, it will be easier than it would have been. Because Carsley did it first.
Too many No 10s
Kane was not the only unresolved issue that hung over Southgate’s England. There was also the challenge of England’s leading players all wanting to play as No 10s. At the Euros Southgate never found a way to get Phil Foden and Jude Bellingham playing well simultaneously, and barely found a way to get Cole Palmer on the pitch at all.
This mini-era presented the chance for Carsley to find a solution, to find a way through the dilemma of having too many good players in one position. But it never happened. It did not help that those players were not always all available at the same time. Palmer only started two games for Carsley, and Foden one. And the one game when he tried to start them all together — Greece at home in October — was the worst performance under Carsley, and the only defeat.
There were glimmers of success. In Carsley’s first game in Dublin in September, Grealish was the 10 and was brilliant. He looked freed up by having creative responsibility with no-one else trying to backseat drive. And when England won 3-0 in Athens last week, Bellingham had his best game under Carsley, driving the team forward as the only 10. No coincidence that Grealish, Foden and Palmer were all out injured.
But while this problem in unsolved, Carsley did reinforce England’s options in wide areas, giving Gordon and Madueke a run of games out wide, playing with consistent width. Both players will surely be part of Tuchel’s plans.
The ‘singular focus’ on the World Cup
Remember that the official explanation for Thomas Tuchel not starting as England manager until January was so that he could have a “singular focus”, in Mark Bullingham’s words, on World Cup qualification?
Tuchel himself said that he did not want to start with the Nations League and then have to switch into World Cup mode. It never felt like a strong argument, simply because it was out of Tuchel’s hands whether he would be playing World Cup qualifiers in March or not. Had England finished second or third in their Nations League group, he would have started with a Nations League play-off. Whether he wanted to or not.
But now that Carsley has won the Nations League group, he has spared Tuchel the slog of a play-off in March and his words being thrown back in his face.
It will only be after the World Cup qualification draw on December 13 that England will be able to start planning seriously for that campaign. But at least when Tuchel finally makes it to his desk he will not have a two-legged Nations League play-off to worry about.
And if England do well in the US, and Tuchel extends his contract beyond summer 2026, he can look forward to playing in the Nations League A-tier again. Maybe by then we will all have a clearer sense of the legacy Carsley left behind.
(Top photo: Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
