5 days Ago By The Telegraph
By any measure it was an eventful five years for Sven-Goran Eriksson as England manager, but his obituaries focused on the same four memories. Beating Germany 5-1, the failure of the golden generation, marital shenanigans and a brush with the Fake Sheikh. Glenn Hoddle’s reign was shorter and summed up by two moments: having his hotel room trashed after omitting Paul Gascoigne from his World Cup squad and saying something weird about reincarnation.
Steve McClaren contributed only one item to the England miscellany, ruining it for all of his successors and condemning them forever to ruined, rain-soaked suits: the umbrella. By contrast Lee Carsley has , attempted a wild 2-3-5 formation against Greece with disastrous results, suggested he wanted the job, said England should have a trophy-winning manager despite never winning a trophy, said he would be happy going back to the Under-21s, had his soy latte me-time ruined by a bloke who wanted to talk about false nines, dropped the captain and country’s all-time leading scorer and now signed off with a borderline triumphant pair of wins including new goalscorers and a replete with wingers getting to the byline and backheeled goals. Devilry! It has been a wild ride and a remarkably eventful return on a 14 week stint as an interim manager, a career’s worth of incidents packed into six games.
This makes Carsley’s reign immediately difficult to assess, the troubleshooter who became a troublemaker before eventually, arguably, overperforming. He looked doomed twice, first after the anthem controversy which alienated a large and vocal portion of England’s fanbase, then fatally after the , who England have never lost to before, nor conceded to at Wembley. But the record will show five wins from six, a promotion back to the hallowed top tier of the Nations League, some promising debuts and the most experimentation seen by an England manager since Bobby Robson gambled successfully on a grey suit for Italia 90.
Some of this will be quite useful for Thomas Tuchel. There was so much frustration at Gareth Southgate’s perceived conservatism by the end of his reign, but the Greece shambles shows what happens if you attempt to pick a real-life team like you are playing Fantasy Football. Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden, Anthony Gordon, Cole Palmer and Bukayo Saka were finally accommodated in the same XI as many wanted and the result was a disjointed mess.
So when Tuchel’s appointment came, six days after that regrettable performance, it was greeted with relief, even by those who believe that the basic idea of international football should extend to the person in the dugout. England, surely, could not go on like this. But there was a stuttering win in Finland to get them back onto track and by the time of the Ireland game on Sunday night some optimism again about the national team’s future.
Some relief that this was not jeopardised by Carsley accidentally singing the Irish anthem, instead looking on mute during with a wrinkled frown as if smelling expired milk. All of this has played out in the Nations League, a competition with long-term promise which still feels like a curios for now, matches pitched somewhere between paper-aeroplane friendly ennui and mid-stakes qualifier. The impression was the Football Association wanted to soft-launch Carsley away from the white-hot intensity of double-headers against Cyprus and Kazakhstan in the lead up to the World Cup.
Instead Tuchel has that all to look forward to and Carsley will presumably return to the Under-21s and a European Championship next year. He goes into that tournament as a reigning champion and his stock would be higher than ever if he is able to retain the trophy. Who knows, perhaps one day he could be back as full-time manager of the senior team? England loves to build them up then knock them down, but we are suckers for a redemption arc too.
If this is to be it for him at this level perhaps the greatest compliment you can pay Carsley is this. Most people who keep a seat warm are entirely forgettable. Yet 30 years from now, when today’s teenagers are reminiscing about the footballing subplots of their youth, someone will ask “Remember Lee Carsley?” and everybody will.
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