5️⃣ candidates who could replace Gareth Southgate as England boss | OneFootball

After eight years and 102 games in charge, Gareth Southgate has left his role as England head coach.

The Three Lions’ defeat to Spain on Sunday was the final act in Southgate’s long, and ultimately heartbreaking, stint as national team manager.

Thoughts now turn to who will replace the 53-year-old with a number of candidates in contention…

The continuity candidate

If the Football Association want to continue down the road of consistency, then the obvious candidate is current England U21 boss Lee Carsley.

Ever since building the St George’s Park training centre in 2012, the FA have been insistent on keeping the ‘England DNA’ for teams at all age groups.

That, supposedly, should allow players in the youth set-up to fit seamlessly into the senior programme and allows England to effectively act like a club side.

Southgate was such a pick back in 2016 as he replaced Sam Allardyce after his sole game in charge, coming from a three-year stint with the U21s.

And now it could be that Carsley continues that line of England DNA and takes over the men’s senior side after working for four years with various age groups.

It worked back then and it could work now, but detractors will, quite rightly, point at Carsley’s complete lack of senior management experience.

The former Everton midfielder has had just three games on the touchline for a senior men’s side, having won one, drawn one and lost the other of three games at Birmingham City in 2017.

Could that ultimately prove to be too little for the top job in the country?

The sensible pick

Newcastle United boss Eddie Howe is another candidate widely tipped as a potential England boss.

Howe has often been seen as a solid if unspectacular club manager but is widely considered to be one of the more thoughtful speakers on the game and a great communicator with his players.

Southgate has been consistently praised as a thoughtful and nuanced England boss, one that may be tactically middling but superb as a statesman and spokesperson for English football as a whole.

It’s clear that Howe could also fit well into that aspect of the top job and can act as impressively in a press conference room as on the training ground.

And then there’s also the fact that on the pitch Howe guided Newcastle back into the Champions League the season before last.

Despite the Saudi riches available to him, Howe still went way beyond initial expectations in 2022/23 to finish in the top four, and then last term gave the Geordie faithful one of their best ever nights with that Champions League win over Paris Saint-Germain.

Howe just feels right as a potential England manager.

The curious one

After his nightmare seven months at Chelsea ended in April 2023, Graham Potter retreated and didn’t rush back into the first job offered to him.

Could that patience turn out to be a stroke of genius from the 49-year-old?

The likes of Lyon, Ajax and Brighton all reportedly offered Potter the chance a return to football management, but the former journeyman left-back opted to play the waiting game.

The timing now could be ideal but how will Potter’s high-pressing, all-action style suit the international game?

Translating that highly-coached, intricate type of system takes a long time and with camps going on for just a week at a time, four times a year, Potter could be starting from a losing position even before he takes the job.

We saw at Chelsea that the pressure of taking charge of one of the country’s biggest clubs seemed to weigh heavy.

Doubts linger then about how Potter would deal with the biggest job of all.

The non-English candidate

It really wasn’t so long ago that the idea of a German coach managing the England national team would have been unthinkable.

Even though a Swede – Sven Göran Eriksson – and an Italian – Fabio Capello – had taken charge of the Three Lions at World Cups, the idea for some in Blighty of a coach from the Fatherland would have been too much.

Thankfully those small-minded days are over and it seems completely reasonable that Thomas Tuchel would be one of the names on this Three Lions shortlist.

A brilliant club coach who has won trophies pretty much everywhere he has worked, Tuchel would be on the list for every single job in world football, let alone the England one.

The former Chelsea boss knows English football, has been reportedly keen on coming back to England to manage once again and is in the prime of his coaching life.

The downside though, is that Tuchel is clearly a combustible figure who has fallen out with big players and isn’t afraid of speaking out against his employers, as he did at Bayern Munich last season.

It really would be fascinating to see him manage the Three Lions.

The dream

Look, is Jürgen Klopp likely to take the England job? Almost certainly not.

But are fans of the Three Lions at least allowed to dream for a little while? Certainly.

Klopp left Liverpool over the summer and was pretty insistent that he wouldn’t be back anytime soon, admitting the role at Anfield was mentally exhausting and left him needing a recharge.

After just two and a half months then, one would imagine that the idea of taking charge of England wouldn’t exactly be anyone’s idea of rest and relaxation.

With the DFB also circling Klopp to eventually replace Julian Nagelsmann as the Germany national team coach, would Klopp really take charge of England before his home nation?

The obvious negatives as to why Klopp wouldn’t take up an England offer are all there. And yet …