This year marks 40 years since an English manager last won the European Cup/Champions League. In the previous eight years (1977-84) English managers won it seven times.
I do like numbers and sometimes they tell you a lot. If Gareth Southgate steps down as England manager after this summer's Euros the F.A. may have quite a problem deciding on a successor. After Southgate's success (don't laugh, compared with his predecessors all the way back to Very Tenables he's been a spectacular success) the F.A. would surely prefer an Englishman, given the underwhelming results obtained by supposedly stellar foreign coaches Eriksson and Capello. But who? Eddie Howe would be obvious but, unless their Saudi owners are getting impatient with him, rather than with the Profit and Sustainability rules that are holding them back, I can't see him quitting a long term project with a chance of winning things.
After Eddie the cupboard is pretty bare. There are six British managers currently at premier League clubs. Of those Scot David Moyes is, yet again, currently highest up the league at 7th. Gary O'Neill has Wolves in 9th place and did well in his one season at Bournemouth before that. Eddie Howe's Newcastle are 10th, then we have Sean Dyche's Everton in 16th (14th but for points deductions which aren't his fault), Welshman Rob Edwards of Luton who would get the ladies' vote but who is in the relegation zone (and I trust says there) and Chris Wilder who is doing his best at bottom placed Sheffield United.
So Gary O'Neill then? Graham Potter is also currently available, but he may be so traumatised by his experience at Chelsea that he wouldn't pick up the phone. But why so few options?
The English coaching system doesn't offer any ready progression to coaching jobs. Not the top jobs, because Premier League owners have their pick of the world and understandably go for coaches with a proven track record. But not really for assistant coaches, either. We have a fascination with people who have "been there, done that". Ex-players like Rooney, Lampard and Gerrard. And yet the head of football coaching and education in Germany from 2000 to 2007, Erich Rutemoller, believes that what characterises top modern day coaches like Klopp and Tuchel (who Rutemoller taught for their UEFA Pro Licences) is their academic approach to the game. Klopp, Guardoila and Thomas Frank all have sports degrees, Tuchel has one in business.
Although Guardiola played at high level he wasn't one of the stars in the team. Klopp, Tuchel and Wenger all had plenty of playing experience but never played at the highest level. It seems that a broader understanding of management and sports science than just having played the game is useful.
But it's also about numbers. I read recently that, as of 2017, there were 15,459 coaches in Spain who held UEFA's top two coaching qualifications. In England it was 2,083. Wow, that tells a story!
Applicants for the F.A.'s courses complain that it's hard to get on them, with few places available. The F.A. say they don't run the courses to make a profit but they charge £9,890 for the UEFA Pro Licence course, the highest coaching qualification. Not a problem for a retiring Premier League player, but younger coaches find it cheaper to go to Spain to study, where it costs about a thousand euros. Which is ok if you are fluent in Spanish.
In the meantime the F.A. must be hoping England do well in the Euros and Southgate decides to carry on. As he's only 53 there seems no reason other than his own desire why he shouldn't go on for a decade till the 2034 World Cup.
Also in last weekend's sports pages was an article on Ruben Selles, the Reading manager who was in charge of Southampton in the Premier League for 17 months. Selles is young (40) but has coached in Spain, Greece, Russia, Norway and Denmark. He started coaching youth teams aged 16, went to university in Valencia and coached the uni football team and took it from there. He was attracted to Reading because of its £50m training ground and flourishing academy and believed what he was told by the club's Chinese owner, Dai Yongge, about the budget he would have and about club's problems being in the past. These problems had led to points deductions and relegation last season. The next day the club was served with a winding up petition by HMRC. The next month the club was put under a transfer embargo and Selles began pre-season with only seven players. Subsequently his no 2, head of player development, head of media and several key academy staff were made redundant. His team of free transfers and academy kids, average age 23, currently sit 6 points above the League One relegation zone. But for 6 points deducted they'd be in touching distance of the top half. Selles has had to contend with fan protests - throwing tennis balls onto the pitch seems to be their favourite method of expression - and the club's training ground has now been put up for sale.
Jonathan Northcroft of the Sunday Times says that, if the vote for English football's manager of the season was held now, he would vote for Selles.
Selles isn't English. But how do we develop English coaches like him so that there are more options for English England managers? A sensible start might be to subsidise that Pro Licence course for English coaches who haven't played at high level. It might also be good idea to evaluate players who don't make the grade from academies as possible future coaches and referees and offer them a pathway to stay in the game. The F.A. need to go and sharpen their pencils.
Here are some other numbers in the sports news:
Preston North End received £15.6m from the Premier League between 2019 and 2022. Not bad considering they've never been in it. PNE's chairman Peter Risdale (remember him, Leeds fans?) complains former Premier League teams in the championship are paying five times more in wages than they are because of parachute payments. But, as Martin Samuel points out, those teams have at least had a connection with the Premier League. A rather large one in the case of Leicester City. Five mill a year for nothing doesn't seem bad to me but still Rick Parry keeps banging his drum that the EFL "deserves" a bigger handout from the Premier League. And, strangely, seems to get a hearing from a Tory government set on having a football regulator which issues threats to the Premier League to give more. The Premier League clubs have businesses to run but then this government long ago made clear it didn't understand business.
Meanwhile, more than 1,000 lower league and women's clubs have been supported by the Premier League Stadium Fund (PLSF) administered by the Football Foundation. It has awarded more than 5,500 grants worth £193.5m to improve facilities and sustain the game outside the Football League. A much better way to spend the money than giving it to the EFL in my view.
Simona Halep's doping ban from tennis was reduced from 4 years to 9 months by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). She claimed that the roxadustat (sometimes called "oxygen in a pill") found in her collagen-based food supplement was contamination she didn't know was there. Her expert witness found contamination in the samples of the supplement. Two WADA labs couldn't find any. But here's the problem. Even if you take the highest level of contamination supposedly present and the lowest level of roxadustat found in her urine samples, she would have had to consume more than 50 times the recommened daily intake of 10g of the supplement. Half a kilo a day would literally be difficult to swallow. If you take the average values of supposed contamination in the supplement and Halep's average urine level it would be 5,000 times the normal daily aount. Does anyone seriously believe she was eating 50 kg a day of the supplement? I certainly can't swallow that.
Sometimes numbers just sing, don't they.
Oh, of ourse it was the CAS who turned Manchester City's ban from European competitions into a fine. Hmmm.
P.S. I decided after some reflection it should be the data tell, not the data tells, stories as strictly speaking the data are plural, data being the plural of the latin datum. Pedant, me?
The return of Halep gives me very little confidence in the fight against doping. David Walsh. Sunday Times 24 March 2024
Why is the Premier League missing title-winning English managers? Tom Allnutt, Sunday Times 24 March 2024
Impossible Job. Jonathan Northcroft, Sunday Times 24 March 2024. A fascinating interview with Reading manager Rueben Selles.
Risdale reality check was in Martin Samuel's Sunday Times column on 17 March 2024
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