From the outside everything seems wonderful in English football. The Premier League is (for the vast majority) the best league in the world, they have powerful teams that fight year after year for European competitions, a great cast of young promises destined to dominate the world and a team that has touched glory in the last tournaments. However, there is growing concern about the coaching crisis in England, a problem that has been accentuated with the arrival of Thomas Tuchel to the ‘Three Lions’ bench.
It is not something that is limited to the national team, but the Premier League itself is suffering the consequences of this situation. In fact, no coach born in English territory has lifted the title since the competition was called this way, having to go back to the 1991-92 season to find the last to do so: Howard Wilkinson with Leeds United. Since then, a Scot, a Frenchman, a Portuguese, four Italians, a Chilean, a Spaniard and a German have won the Premier League… but no Englishman.
The Premier League has become something like the golden age of Hollywood
Howard Wilkinson
Last coaches to win the League in their country
Spain: Xavi Hernández (2022-23)France: Christophe Galtier (2022-23)Germany: Thomas Tuchel (2022-23)Italy: Simone Inzaghi (2023-24)England: Howard Wilkinson (1991-92)
Wilkinson himself has spoken in the Daily Mail about this crisis: “I don’t see a solution.” Furthermore, he has analyzed the situation with a curious metaphor: “It has become something like the golden age of Hollywood. If you were a good actor or artist, the best thing was to get to Hollywood, where they paid the best money and produced the best films.” “The Premier League pays better and, once you enter the free market, you face the consequences that come with it.”
A Premier dominated by foreigners
The data is clear and conclusive with respect to the English League: there are only three Britons on the bench and, of them, only one directs a team that is among the top 14. Eddie Howe (Newcastle, 8th), Sean Dyche (Everton, 16th) and Gary O’Neil (Wolverhampton, 19th) are the only three survivors.
Spaniards training in LaLiga: 15Germans training in the Bundesliga: 9Italians training in Serie A: 16French training in Ligue 1: 10English training in the Premier League: 3
Frank Lampard and Graham Potter previously stood out, but their respective poor seasons at Chelsea and Everton have meant that they are now without a team. Specifically, the Londoners have opted for Enzo Maresca, following a trend that started with Arsène Wenger. Until the arrival of the Frenchman to Arsenal, the clubs were reluctant to bet on talent outside the islands, but the success that ‘The Professor’ had in the ‘gunners’ made that fear diminish, until reaching the current panorama, where Clubs seem more willing to hire foreign than national coaches.
If there is one nationality that stands out above the rest, it is the Spanish, with five technicians. Pep Guardiola coaches the current champion, Arteta the great contender for the title, Emery the great surprise of the season, Lopetegui the legendary West Ham and Iraola leads the Bournemouth project. In addition, there are also three Portuguese with the arrival of Amorim to United, who joins Nuno Espirito Santo and Marco Silva.
The problem with selection
At the end of the day, all these shortcomings that are observed in the reality of Premier League clubs inevitably end up being reflected in the national team, where from January 1, 2025 Thomas Tuchel will take the lead on his path to the 2026 World Cup. “Hopefully I can convince them and show how proud I am to be the England coach,” he said in his presentation.
I hope I can convince them and show how proud I am to be the England coach.
Thomas Tuchel, England coach
It is not lost on anyone that England is a ‘special’ country. They are very much yours. They have their own way, their own way of driving… and they want their own coaches. It is not surprising, therefore, that the front page of the ‘Daily Mail’ the day after his appointment was ‘Dark Day’. Furthermore, they remarked: “We don’t need Thomas Tuchel. “We need a patriot who puts this country at the first level.”
To understand how this situation came about, you have to travel back about 10 years. At which time the FA (‘Football Association’) launched an exhaustive player development plan at national level. However, that plan has not been executed equally at the coaching level. The great example is Graham Potter. Possibly, the great project of the English coach… who is on his way to being unemployed for two years after being fired by Chelsea.
Graham Potter, during a match with ChelseaEFE
Faced with this situation, the FA had no choice but to look outside to find the right coach capable of squeezing out all the talent it has in English football. According to ‘The Athletic’, they met with 10 candidates… including several Englishmen. But none could compete with the resume that Tuchel has built. To give us an idea, he has more than double the number of games in the Champions League (67) than Graham Potter, Eddie Howe, Frank Lampard and Scott Parker combined (31).
It is clear that we would love to have five or ten national candidates. But we’re not at that point.
Mark Bullingham, FA Chief Executive
“It is clear that we would love to have five or ten national candidates who coach clubs in our national league, who compete and win titles. But we are not at that point,” FA chief executive Mark Bullingham said at Tuchel’s presentation.
The reality is that, when the FA has decided to open its sights outside its borders, the results have not been as expected for a team that has only levitated the 1966 World Cup at the hands of Alf Ramsey. Not counting interims, Tuchel will be the third foreign coach to lead the ‘Three Lions’ after the recently deceased Sven-Göran Eriksson (2001-2006) and Fabio Capello (2007-2012).
Thomas Tuchel, in his presentation with EnglandEFE
To this we must add that she will be the first to coach a team. “I wasn’t sure this was the job for me because the timetable is so different, but I always wanted to come back to England.” Now, if there is one thing he has shown, it is that he is a specialist in short tournaments. Of note is the Champions League he won with Chelsea in 2021 and the final reached with PSG just a year before.
Obviously, the FA’s big objective is to obtain results and, with Tuchel, the feeling is that they could be closer. But behind this decision lies a serious problem that the inventors of football will have to address sooner rather than later.
A possible cause
Among the many causes that can cause this problem, there is one that is quite significant in terms of the difficulties in obtaining a degree in England compared to other countries. UEFA has three titles: B, A and PRO, the latter being the one necessary to train in the top elite. The number of UEFA PRO licenses in Spain exceeds 2,000, while in England it barely exceeds 200. Germany, for example, is somewhere in the middle, with just over 1,000.
From the British country they point out that the cost of them and the places offered could be one of the reasons for the lack of coaches. While in Spain, always taken as an example in this type of issues due to recent successes, it costs more than 1,000 euros, in England it reaches 13,700 pounds to obtain the last of the coaching titles. A prohibitive price for many. Despite the salary differences that exist in both territories, they are not enough to explain this difference.
We need opportunities, but we have to earn that position and that right
Lee Carsley
However, Lee Carsley points to another reason why the English are running out of coaches: “We need opportunities. We need more English and British coaches in the Premier League and in the Championship, who have the opportunity to show what they can do, but we have to earn that position and that right. We are going in the right direction, but ultimately the coaches need that opportunity.
Whatever the problem, in England they need a solution. They have a great League, great clubs and a great national team, but they have left their bench exposed. They have the best house, but they are leaving the keys to the neighbor.
