The Athletic has launched a series of sports debates in which two writers break down a specific topic. In this edition, Steve Madeley and Max Mathews discuss whether Lee Carsley has done enough in his two matches as England’s interim manager to get the job full-time.
Gareth Southgate reached two European Championship finals but his exit as England manager in the summer has left the Football Association with a decision to make.
Lee Carsley has stepped up from coaching the under-21s, with much success, and taken charge of two 2-0 victories, against the Republic of Ireland and Finland in the Nations League.
But has he shown enough, either while with the under-21s, or during these two games to be given the job on a full-time basis?
Here, two writers discuss the pros and cons, and you can vote for your choice at the bottom of this article.
Steve: So, Max, we’ve watched two games under Lee Carsley, England have won both, played well for long spells, he’s got Harry Kane firing again and he has a winning record as an international coach.
Audition passed, surely? Give that man the job and let’s get on with winning a World Cup. I might be getting a bit carried away, but you take my point…
Max: First, Steve, we appreciate The Athletic getting two follicly-challenged men to debate one another about a subject who is also lacking in the hair department. And yes, I take your point about his first two games, though I think Carsley would have had to have done very badly to get turned over by either team, who are around Iraq (55), DR Congo (60) and Uzbekistan (61) in the FIFA rankings (Republic of Ireland, 58; Finland, 63)!
Steve: That’s a fair point and my opening gambit was probably a tad flippant, but the reality is games like the last two are what being England manager is about for much of the time. Outside of international tournaments, how often do England play other ‘heavyweight’ nations in competitive games? Once or twice in each qualifying campaign.
I was as encouraged by the way England played under Carsley as much as by the results. The players looked comfortable in his system and more liberated than in the latter days of Southgate — I was a Southgate fan but it was time for a change of voice, and why shouldn’t that voice be Carsley’s? He knows a lot of these players and he is the closest thing we have to an English coach with international tournament success.
Max: Yes, but I remember Roy Hodgson’s England being brilliant in qualifying against lower-ranked nations and then… best forget what happened next. England played well overall, but they could have been 2-0 down in the first 10 minutes against Ireland and if that happens, even if they come back to win, his nascent hopes for the top would take a serious dent.
I was a Southgate fan too, but he had become so stuffy and stubborn that I feel like whoever succeeds him would benefit from the refresh and reset allowed by his exit. I admire Carsley’s success at youth level but there are other coaches with more heavyweight coaching pedigree, namely Graham Potter or Eddie Howe, to give two examples.
Steve: I’m not so sure about Howe. I might have misread this but he seems to have made England his fallback position if things go wrong at Newcastle, which I guess is no surprise given that the FA would struggle to match the wages.
Potter is a more obvious alternative to Carsley and I like him, but the only time he’s had a job with a profile close to England is at Chelsea and that did not go well. Unless we’re willing to consider an overseas coach again — and I think there’s a section of the fanbase that would struggle with that — I don’t see any brilliant alternatives. And I realise that’s not a reason on its own to give Carsley the job but I think it is a consideration. Are any of these people better than the guy currently in the job and who is already part of the FA structures?
Max: The Chelsea job is an absolute poisoned chalice, and plenty of top coaches have been chewed up and spat out by the chaos machine of that club. While it definitely could have gone better for Potter there, he is a thoughtful, intelligent coach renowned for his work with young players and for installing an attractive, progressive style of play.
Howe might be harder to get but he has an impressive body of work improving teams at both Bournemouth and Newcastle. I’d steer clear of overseas managers — but for me, Potter and Howe (in that order) have stronger credentials, as well as top-level (Premier League) experience. I would keep Carsley as part of the setup, but to give him the full-time job, right now, has a whiff of the Ole Gunnar Solskjaer or Frank Lampard hires at Manchester United and Chelsea respectively, mostly for ‘knowing the club’.
Steve: I realise I’ve just been guilty of it myself but I’m generally not a fan of comparing club management with international football. They’re very different jobs. So while both Howe and Potter have solid club CVs, I’m not sure how relevant they are when it comes to the England job.
Let’s look at the last few major tournaments. Luis de la Fuente had spent nearly a decade with Spain’s younger sides before he won the Euros this summer, while Lionel Scaloni hadn’t managed a club at all before his Argentina side won the World Cup in 2022.
I know Southgate splits opinion but he is our most successful coach since Sir Alf Ramsay, on the back of a tough time at Middlesbrough. Successful club coaches can do well at international level — see Roberto Mancini — but it’s not essential. I’d consider Carsley’s experience of the FA pathways and his success with the under-21s as a more important box to tick.
Max: Club and international football are different, but I wouldn’t say it’s an uncrossable divide. De la Fuente and Scaloni are two great recent examples, but historically that type of manager is the exception rather than the rule: see Marcello Lippi, Vicente del Bosque and Didier Deschamps winning three of the previous five World Cups and Emma Hayes winning Olympic gold very quickly after moving from club to international.
Experience of FA pathways and age-grade success is fine but Steve Cooper, who has both after winning the Under-17 World Cup with England in 2017, is a country mile off the senior job. A strong thread between the youth and senior teams is important, too. But that could as easily be achieved with Carsley and, say, Ashley Cole as senior coaches alongside a bigger-name figure who commands respect and has the authority to deal with stars’ sizeable egos — and there is not enough evidence at the moment that Carsley is that man.
Steve: I hear that kind of argument a lot — we need a big-name, star manager to get the best out of this group of players — but I don’t really buy it. For one thing, I don’t know who that person is. I don’t see Carlo Ancelotti leaving Real Madrid for England, Jurgen Klopp has made it clear he’s taking time off and Pep Guardiola is staying at Manchester City for at least the rest of this season.
I would dispense with all of my previous arguments and take Pep with open arms if he was available. But is it right to leave the team in limbo under a caretaker manager until he decides he’s ready? No.
I would give Carsley the job, with the extra confidence and stability that decision would provide, then if it’s not going well when Pep becomes available, we can reassess. And if it is going well, there would be no need to change. So it’s win-win. Speaking of which, I seem to have inadvertently narrowed down the field to a couple of follicly-challenged coaches, which kind of brings this conversation back to where it began…
(Top photo: Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images; design by Eamonn Dalton)
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