Lee Carsley quick to realise there is no hiding place in ‘impossible job’

England’s interim manager is close to permanent job by default but, like all his predecessors, he will not be able to avoid more controversy

As England manager, one can set out in the job to be as detached as possible from the great drama and controversy that surrounds the role and yet it will invariably seek you out. There is no hiding place – be that for Sir Bobby Robson, Fabio Capello, Gareth Southgate or, indeed, Lee Carsley.
The interim manager, two wins in two Nations League games, has attempted thus far to keep it as straightforward as possible. He says that he has not even heard the role he currently occupies described as “an impossible job” – a line so fundamental to English football history that it gives its name to the greatest football documentary ever made. If Carsley has really never seen the epic 1993 work that is Graham Taylor demanding, among other things, that Les [Ferdinand] demand it – then he is in for a treat.
It never is simple, because in the end the decisions an England manager makes means that, by definition, he chooses sides in one great crisis or another. If Carsley is to be the next England manager on a permanent basis then he will have to accept that those hard choices are coming. They start with the question of selection and often get much more complex. No one, not the Football Association, and not his players, can spare him from that.
Of his predecessors in the job, there is much to learn. Robson was at war with much of the media of the day and certainly elements of the 1980s television punditocracy, a feud that he pursued with a cheery persistence. There is not the space to outline the strange vortex of sex and office politics which engulfed Sven-Goran Eriksson at the FA.
Fabio Capello had to choose between John Terry and his job and somehow chose John Terry. Roy Hodgson had to choose between Terry and Rio Ferdinand as that feud burned. Southgate had to end Wayne Rooney’s England career. Neither did he duck questions of Englishness, identity, racial politics and the team’s burden of history. In fact, he chose to raise many of them independently.
Carsley took the warm-up at Wembley on Tuesday night and could be forgiven for thinking that out there coaching on the pitch is his safe place. Last week he chose not to engage on the question of the wisdom or otherwise of his decision not to sing the national anthem. There is much about which England managers get asked that they do not have to offer a shot on – some of the politics of football, politics in general – but eventually the issue arrives for which there can be no abstention.
Just about everything in football connects back to the national team – and its success or otherwise. The cajoling of the players, the self-interest of their clubs, the role that the England team has in national life. It is what makes managing England such a rich and varied challenge.
Carsley certainly feels close to winning the job on a permanent basis. Not because England necessarily sparkled against the Republic of Ireland and Finland. Rather than offer a threat themselves, these were primarily two opponents who had to be excavated from their defensive positions. Carsley seems close because he is the incumbent and there are no standout alternative English candidates who might make the effort worthwhile. The FA has become accustomed to the days of Southgate-ism and one suspects it hopes for more of that with another internal appointment.
The FA technical director John McDermott and chief executive Mark Bullingham are, as Telegraph Sport reports, sounding out other candidates. But how does that look for those managers? With every Carsley win, their prospects become more distant. In football, where perception is everything, none will wish to be portrayed as having been the failed candidate. For the sake of their own careers, they may well wonder whether it is more strategic to declare no interest in the job.
There is no denying that Carsley would be an unusual appointment, hence the FA’s reluctance to give him the job immediately. He will be a much easier sell to the English football public with six wins and some good performances. In principle, there is much to be said for promoting the Under-21s manager to the senior role. It certainly worked last time, and the FA has tried everything else.
It has followed most trends. Laidback foreign coach. Authoritarian foreign coach. Well-travelled senior English coach. Young English coaches. The FA has given the job to Hodgson with 18 senior appointments behind him. They gave it to Southgate with just one of the same behind him.
Carsley, of course, has no senior appointments. But the vogue now is for the low-profile federation insider, promoted from the youth ranks. Luis de la Fuente has done all his coaching cohort a great favour, but even Spain’s Euro 2024-winning manager has a resumé that includes at least one senior short-lived club role. It is worth noting that Steve McClaren’s appointment in 2006 came with some concern about his lack of experience. He had been a Premier League manager for almost five years and reached a Uefa Cup final – much good that it did him.
The game changes. The absence of an available standout English alternative is a powerful factor and the FA cannot be blamed for that. But if Carsley is to be its man then he and the FA must be realistic about how he will approach the most difficult issues – of which, inevitably, there will be some.