da aviator aposta： In this uncertain life, there are at least some certainties: death, taxes, and pointed debates about the England national team. In this particular instance, debates about who should be in charge.
da pinup bet： It probably will be Gareth Southgate.
Southgate ticks one particular box that seemed to be important the last time England searched for a manager in the summer: he’s English.
Despite the money paid out by the FA to appoint big-name managers Sven-Goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello, only one foreign manager has ever won a World Cup or a European Championships. That was the German Otto Rehhagel, who won Euro 2004 with Greece. In fact, the Euro 2004 final was the only time foreign managers led out both teams in a European Championships or a World Cup final: Luiz Felipe Scolari took hosts Portugal to the final that year, too.
Aside from those, only two other foreign managers have ever taken teams to a final. Legendary Austrian manager Ernst Happel was in charge of the Netherlands in 1978, and forgotten Englishman George Raynor took Sweden to the final of the 1958 World Cup. Both lost.
Raynor managed Lazio after a brief spell as director of football at Juventus in Italy, before returning to coach Sweden. (He had managed Sweden between 1946 and 1954 as well, winning Olympic gold 1948 games, ironically in London.) But straight after his stunning achievement at the 1958 World Cup, his search for a job back in England saw him take over as manager of Skegness Town.
There has clearly been a mistrust of all things foreign. You get the feeling that Raynor’s later career was a case of ‘you may well have managed top teams in Italy and taken Sweden to the World Cup final, but back here in Britain, we do things a little differently.’
50 years ago, World Cups were a coming together of styles, and tactics from the cutting edge of football around the world. Footballing styles were still peculiar to certain parts of the world, and managers weren’t usually foreign for a simple reason: foreign managers wouldn’t have understood the national game properly. Raynor spent six years coaching Sweden in his first spell, and by the time he was leading them to a World Cup final, he knew Swedish football well.
But things have changed, and international football is a different place to what it was then. Football in general is more diverse and globalised. And so that dilutes the argument somewhat. Foreign coaches will find it easier to impose a style on a national team, just like any club manager coming into a new job, it’s all about the players at his disposal and his ability to coach them.
The concentration of money in the club game means that tactics can be tweaked and looked at in much greater detail than ever before. Players are much more receptive to tactics, and coaches at club level are used to going out into the world, tasking their scouts to look for very specific players; ones who can fit into a team in a very specific way.
International football is similar. But it is still different, too. You can’t just go and buy a new left winger because the one you have doesn’t fit your plan. You can’t scout the world for players who fit, only for the weaknesses in your upcoming opposition. If you want to instil a style of play, you have to do it by producing the right kinds of players to play it.
And that’s why Southgate shouldn’t be judged like any other club manager. In fact, he’s not a club manager at all. And the sooner we realise there’s a big difference between club managers and international managers, the better. International football is a different beast – only seeing players every few months makes it quite clearly different. You can’t take the same approach.
So why would England want to appoint a top club manager? Why would an Arsene Wenger, or even a Jose Mourinho, have any more experience? Why should they be seen as any less of a risk?
Southgate might not be the visionary man of action or figure of destiny, but he is being judged on the wrong criteria. Just like George Raynor was overlooked for top jobs in England because foreign clubs were seen as inferior, Gareth Southgate is judged by today’s onlookers because his experience at international level is deemed inferior. In both scenarios, the received opinion is wrong.