Thomas Tuchel’s first break in coaching came when, a knee injury having forced his retirement at the age of 25, he was handed the reigns of the Stuttgart youth team by Ralf Rangnick, the high priest of gegenpressing. Two of his earliest senior roles saw him remold and adapt the teachings of Jurgen Klopp, taking Mainz higher than they have ever been before or since and giving Bayern Munich an almighty challenge when in charge of Bundesliga. Over his 17 years of coaching, the likes of Julian Nagelsmann and Marco Rose have found themselves under his tutelage. A coaching tree over two decades in the nurturing has extended its roots to Anfield, the Allianz Arena and now to Wembley.
Set against that, what have England produced? The most compelling homegrown free agent on the market had hardly been readied for the job in his homeland. Indeed, it took Graham Potter taking Ostersunds from the fourth tier of the Swedish pyramid to the Europa League knockout stages before a club in the Championship would even take a punt on him.
To be seriously considered among the top echelon of coaches in his homeland, Eddie Howe had to take Bournemouth from the basement of League Two to the Premier League. Even then, would he seriously have been in the conversation if Newcastle had not given him a chance in 2021?
After that, the options are pretty minimal. Europe’s top five leagues contain three English head coaches (four if you are inclined to consider the Belgian-born Will Still). There has been no major honor lifted by an English manager in their homeland since Harry Redknapp in 2008. Much has been made of the pathway from St. George’s Park for coaches established in light of Gareth Southgate’s success but the pipeline from development to the highest levels of the game is no less lengthy for coaches than it is for players. The EPPP that was designed to bring the best and brightest on-field talent to the pinnacle of the English game is bearing fruit but only after a decade.
The early signs are that coaches are coming through, many of them respected in the game before they get the top jobs. For now English clubs seems reticent to take the jump. It took five years of being garlanded with praise for his work at Manchester United before Kieran McKenna was afforded a senior job at Ipswich Town. Over spells at Swansea, Chelsea, Manchester United and Wales, Eric Ramsay was considered one of the best young coaches in the sport. No wonder, he was the youngest British coach to be awarded a UEFA Pro Licence. Still, he has had to move to MLS for his first big break in management. Tuchel’s assistant Anthony Barry has been admired enough to get jobs under Roberto Martinez.
The promise is there in individual cases but these are only the first saplings in what needs to be a forest of talent if it is to impact the world’s game. It has been a lifetime since an English coach has been at the tactical vanguard of football, dating back to Sir Alf Ramsey’s World Cup winners. In the last 20 years, too many opportunities have gone to some of the biggest on-field talents. The parachuting in of big names such as Gary Neville and Frank Lampard at top jobs has done more harm than good to English coaching standards.
All of which goes some way to addressing the question that Tuchel will doubtless face more than once over his tenure: why can’t an English manager do your job? The idea, after all, is a persuasive one. International football is supposed to be our best against yours, a near-corinthian endeavor when set against the avarice of the club game. Shouldn’t that extend to the man in the dugout?
Then again, most would tacitly acknowledge that this is an unwritten rule for only the ‘top nations’, a group which one-time world champions England allegedly belong to. There is no widespread outrage that the likes of Portugal, Colombia, Nigeria and Ivory Coast frequently turn to coaches from beyond their borders. All those nations have won as many or more major honors than the Three Lions. Even two-time world champions Uruguay have no qualms handing the reigns to an Argentine.
The best of the best might get to take a principled stance but they have developed structures to enable that. There is no English equivalent to Coverciano, the Italian university of football management, no commitment to developing coach upon coach upon coach like in the Basque Country. If you intend to hamstring yourself by population, you better have done the work to develop your talent pool a lot time ago.
Set aside for a moment the possibility that someone from beyond a country’s borders might feel more kinship to the nation than many born here — only four months into his Chelsea tenure Tuchel was telling this publication London was “the perfect place at the perfect time” — and the real question is why England should consider themselves above help from beyond their borders.
Tuchel himself addressed it quite elegantly in his introductory press conference. Asked what he could tell those skeptical about his nationality, he said, “I’m sorry. I just have a German passport. I can tell them, maybe these supporters felt my passion for the Premier League, the country, how I love to live here and work here. Hopefully I can convince them and show them that I’m proud to be the English manager.”
He even dodged the question about national anthems, merely celebrating how “moving” it is to beseech the almighty to protect a septuagenarian monarch.
Frankly, there are bigger existential questions around English coaching, some of which go far beyond the FA’s sphere of influence. Why don’t Premier League and even Championship clubs take a gamble on unproven talent unless it has been supervised by Guardiola? Why is it only in recent years that English managers have once more begun testing themselves on the other side of the Channel and is it all a question of the nation’s aptitude with foreign languages?
Right now, those were not the questions at the forefront of English minds.
“Fundamentally, we wanted to hire a coaching team to give us the best possible chance of winning a major tournament, and we believe they will do just that,” said FA CEO Mark Bullingham of Tuchel and his English assistant Anthony Barry.
The world-class talent is there. As Carsley himself put it, the opportunity “deserves a world-class coach who has won trophies.” By any reasonable definition, Tuchel reaches that standard. No English coach does, nor has any this century.
Ultimately, the aim of international football is not to be the most representative of your nation. It is to win the biggest prizes, all the more so when you haven’t done so in 60 years. An elite head coach carefully nurtured on the branches of one of the most successful coaching trees of this generation seems a better prospect than anything grown in the altogether less fertile English soil.
