No Englishman for the top job at Manchester United

The retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson is a once in a century event. You don’t get managers with such legacy and achievements in football anymore and it is almost certain that his spoils will be unmatched by anyone in the future. Modern football and the mad world of sugar daddy owners provide no room for such things. Ferguson’s retirement has resulted in one of the most respectable job openings in world sports. The Old Trafford hot seat is a revered position, and possibly every manager’s dream.

At the time of writing, David Moyes seems the favourite for the job, following in the footsteps of his fellow Scot. Other names being mentioned are Jose Mourinho, Jurgen Klopp and Manuel Pellegrini. Whether Moyes is the most suitable candidate or not and the merits of other potential options are already being widely analysed by many and is not the subject matter here. For the biggest position in English football, ironically there is not one English manager who can be considered as even a potential candidate. And it’s the English who invented the game! Although most of the big clubs in any major footballing country (in Europe) have done away with opting only for their nationals (barring few clubs in Italy), the lack of even a single suitable English man is a sad predicament.

For the sake of an argument, let us consider potential English managers to replace Ferguson. Thinking about English managers who have suitable top–flight experience, names such as Sam Allardyce or Harry Redknapp come to mind. Yes, the manager who pioneers life-less football and the other one who wasted millions in taking QPR to the Championship. That’s a real scarcity of top managerial material! Gone are the days of Bob Paisley, Brian Clough and Sir Bobby Robson. The reality is that England does not produce top managers anymore. Mangers from other home nations fare much better, at least in terms of top flight experience. Out of the 20 Premier League managers, there are four English managers, four Scots, one Welshman and two from the Irelands, one Argentine and the rest from the continent. Compare that to the other big leagues in Europe, there are nineteen Italian managers in Serie A, thirteen Spaniards in La Liga and sixteen Germans in Bundesliga. There have been lot of talks and concern about the falling proportion of English players in the Premier League, but the falling number of native mangers is even more drastic. No wonder that England was one of the few major footballing nations to have opted for a foreign manager in the past.

One major reason behind the lack of Englishmen taking up managerial post could be retiring players getting out of the game completely and not taking up coaching. Besides this, the geo-political factor (where nationals from other home nations all grow up in England as locals) also plays a role. Whatever the exact reasons are, it is not a healthy sign for the English game. Managers and coaches of the specific country understand the local talent much more than foreigners. The sadder part is that the few English managers in the top flight do not match up to their continental peers in terms of tactical acumen and innovation. English football is not just constrained by lack of talented domestic players, but also by the lack of talented domestic managers.

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