Lee Carsley says England “have all the tools” to win the World Cup in 2026, as he prepares to hand the team over to Thomas Tuchel.
Carsley hopes to debrief with Tuchel before the new England manager formally takes over on January 1, and he sounded a confident note on the national team’s prospects under Tuchel on Sunday evening.
England’s 5-0 win over the Republic of Ireland meant that they won their Nations League group, granting Tuchel his wish that he will start his England tenure with a clean focus on the World Cup qualification campaign. And Carsley, in his last remarks to the media as interim manager, said that England have the players to triumph in the United States in 2026.
“I think we are in a good position to do that,” Carsley said, when asked if this team can win the World Cup. “I think we have the talent to do it. I have been lucky enough now to be at the last couple of World Cups. And [it is about] the timing of the players being in form, physically and mentally, at the right time, picking the right squad. We have got all of the tools. We just need to play them in the [right] order.”
Carsley admitted that one of the main challenges Tuchel will face will be fitting all of England’s most talented attacking players together.
The one time Carsley tried to play Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden, Cole Palmer and Bukayo Saka together in the same team it did not work, as England lost at home to Greece. The job for Tuchel is to find a system that makes the most of the talent available to him.
“There’s competition for places,” Carsley said. “I think the best chance of us winning is, if we can, find a place [for them]. You saw the Greece game at home, I tried that. So it is a challenge. It needs work. The one thing you don’t get with the international camps is time. So we just have to find that balance.”
Carsley told a story of attending a UEFA conference where other international coaches pointed to the talent available to England as if it were a headache.
“They said ‘you’ve got a lot of good players’ as if that’s a negative thing,” he said. “If they’re all in form at exactly the same time then it’s a challenge. But players do come in and out of form. And it’s putting them in the team when they’re flying and resting them when they’re not.”
Carsley will now return to the England Under-21 job, along with Ashley Cole, but not with Joleon Lescott, who has also assisted him over the last three months. And he said how much he is looking forward to it ahead of next summer’s European Under-21 Championship.
“I love coaching the under-21s, I absolutely love it,” Carsley said. “I said it on Saturday: it’s all about the players. I’m not one that’s chasing anything. I’m really content with the job I do and I’ll do my best.”
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