Enter: the Carsley-verse. Look back just a couple of weeks and the Football Association’s decision to install an internal temporary replacement for the men’s senior manager, thereby delaying any permanent decision while relegitimising the architecture of the existing pathway structure, still felt like an act of such mind-numbing dullness that even reading these words now is likely to induce a form of narcolepsy, insomnia, haunted dreams, night terrors.
Cut back to this weekend and that trial appointment has already achieved one significant thing, specifically lending a mild air of jeopardy and intrigue to an otherwise unwanted back-to-school September international break.
Who knew it was possible, before a minute has been played, to develop strong feelings about Lee Carsley and his claims on a permanent position as England manager? But it turns out Carsley is not just personable and efficient and well-liked. He has, as they say, a bit about him.
England managerdom is always an act of persuasion. A narrative of succession and destiny must be created, with the need to seduce public, press and players. Even Gareth Southgate did this early on with that air of dishing up hard, vinegary truths, the long interludes of saying stuff sadly behind a desk.
Carsley, not so much. In a hugely refreshing break from recent traditions England’s temporary manager doesn’t seem to actually have a philosophy or a vision. He doesn’t have a captivating personal redemption arc. It seems safe to predict nobody is ever going to write a successful West End play about Lee Carsley’s nuanced reimagining of the basic concept of Englishness. It isn’t necessary to care about what he wears (Lee Carsley serves tracksuit: 10 times the internet went wild).
And yes, England under Carsley could still be nothing at all. This is a temporary gig, a semi-audition, a test to see if the voice, the optics, the shoulders, the way of standing and walking look right. So far it’s good. The noises, the outline, the close-ups feel right. Carsley seems smart and emotionally open. With this in mind I’m going early. Carsley in. It already feels as though it would be good and logical and just the right thing to give him the job properly.
Many will disagree with this, will demand bolt-on success, guaranteed world-class club coaching chops and all the rest. These are fair points. But this is also to misunderstand the point of international football a bit; to ignore both the emotional and structural reasons why Carsley makes a lot of sense.
First, the emotional part, which is important, because international football is about feelings, and Carsley’s initial ace is he’s just really likable. He’s clearly a very decent man. He’s got a lovely smile. Bald and twinkly really suits him. He looks like a hungover Alan Shearer, but more wholesome. He looks like he’d be really fun to go on a fishing trip with. He looks like a cheerful high-street baker in an advert for eccles cakes.
Likable then, which is good. But then there’s the second thing about Carsley, which seem to have been a little overlooked, but is genuinely rare in modern football. The fact is nobody really knows anything about him. Somehow, aged 50, Carsley has managed to reach this stage with no real footprint, no list of enemies on the internet, no endlessly rehearsed flaws and blind spots.
Frankly, nobody has a bad word to say about him. Nobody really has any words to say about him. In the general rush to find something earlier this week TalkSport asked Kevin Phillips to sum up Carsley in one word. There was a long, dramatic pause while Phillips tried to think of something. And while it was really disappointing not to hear him say “perspicacious” or “sensual” or “cruel” or “hyper-sexualised” (he said “tough”), the whole exchange embodied the sense of Carsley as the man who fell to Earth.
He is the least-known person ever to get this close to taking on English football’s top job, and at a time when everyone is known, when this should be impossible. Almost as though a normal person who has worked hard now finds himself towards the front of things on merit.
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And this is the real reason Carsley should get the job. International football is supposed to be a test of your systems, the health of your sporting culture, the coaching knowledge bank, the player production lines. It tells us: how well have you been looking after this thing? Spain were led at the Euros by Luis de la Fuente, essentially a Spanish Carsley, a pathway man, and it felt, in its own way, like a complete systemic triumph.
Carsley, like Southgate before him, is what English football has produced. Consider the alternatives. For a while it was worth hoping Jürgen Klopp could be persuaded to take a pay cut and do it as a kind of exercise in goodwill. Otherwise hiring a famous elite club manager for £10m a year would be both a nauseating waste of money and completely pointless. What does it tell us to discover that Pep Guardiola is, as we expected, a really good Catalan football manager?
Otherwise you’re looking at the classic famous ex-player route, a Gerrard-Lampard experiment in unearned celebrity privilege. Eddie Howe would be good. He’s the only successful elite English club manager. He has also come through the entire football league, and so is at least representative of something.
And these are Carsley’s credentials too. He’s what we have. Here is coach who whose career has been spent inside the development pathways, in thinking about how English players should be coached, having jobs called things like Professional Development Phase lead.
Carsley isn’t supposed to be a big personality or a charismatic svengali. He is what we have made. To the extent that even Carsley failure, whirling on his touchline, yelling things like like “restructure the central possession architecture” at his tearful former under-21 players, would be fascinating and understandable, would come from a failure of methods rather than the more incoherent dysfunction of the past.
This is also why international football becomes more distinct and appealing as time goes on. It is customary at moments like this to complain about the interruption to the club season, but there is also a case to be made the things that are being interrupted are pretty dull in their own right. That trying to make a team work with fixed resources is more interesting than top-heavy leagues, celebrity obsession and arguments about net spend. That Lee Carsley managing England is more interesting than, say, whatever Chelsea would be doing right now.In the next few days we will at least find out what a senior Carsley team looks like. We know he made his name as an “out-of-possession” coach. There has been some vague, hopeful talk about “freedom within a structure”. But Carsley is also, lest we forget, the only England manager to win a senior or under-21s men’s trophy in the past 40 years. If the FA has any real faith in its own methods, the only logical thing is to give him the job, stand back and watch.