Good luck Nord

I was pleased to see Gareth Southgate get the England job. I think the England manager should be English and he has served a decent apprenticeship. People say he failed at Middlesbro but they were well positioned in the Championship when he got the boot. And he has done well with the young England age groups. He seems to be an intelligent and thoughtful chap. It won't be long before the honeymoon is over, but I hope England stick with him through at least two tournaments (the next World Cup and Euros) and allow him to learn on the job. After all, we've tried big name foreign coaches (Eriksson and Capello) and it hasn't worked. So what's there to lose? After all, there isn't exactly a queue of experienced English managers available.

And the reason? It's not just that the big clubs only go for foreign managers (after all, would that be racist?) There is something rotten at the heart of our game and I'm not referring to the abuse of young players. We have gone badge mad - it takes four and a half years minimum for a pro footballer to progress from level 2 (they are exempt from level 1) to a UEFA Pro licence. And it costs £4885, though only £1034 in Spain and £457 in Germany. Probably as a result we have only 203 qualified coaches in England, compared to 5,500 in Germany and 12,720 in Spain. And to what avail? Curtis Woodhouse, who played for 8 different Football League clubs and has had success managing non-league clubs, says many former players have given up trying to get a management job. They have spent time and money ticking all the boxes, but can't even get an interview. He says a former England international has applied for 27 jobs and not had one interview in 3 years, so has gone into another line of work. How can there be a conveyor belt of future candidates when so few experienced pros can get a job, even if they want to do so, rather than go for media opportunities?

As Martin Samuel said, we can't really bemoan that there aren't plenty of English candidates for the England job - the FA are lucky to have found one. So let's hope he does well and it encourages others to get a chance.

Southgate revealed his nickname as a junior footballer in the memoir of his playing career, co-written by David Walsh (aka Lance Armstrong's troll), called "Woody and Nord - a football friendship". Southgate only wanted to have the autobiography written if it told the story not just of his career but of his best friend as an apprentice at Crystal Palace, Andy Woodman. While Southgate went on to play for a succession of Premiership Clubs, Woodman, after being released on the day Palace were promoted, shuffled around the lower divisions. The story of a friendship that endured as two wildly divergent careers progressed gave an insight into the national game, from the staggering money and prestige of the Premier League to the precarious living and hard knocks of the then Nationwide League. Walsh has said that the best bits in the book were sections that Southgate penned himself.

Oh, of course Woodman was called "Woody", so Southgate was called "Nord" because the scholarly teenager reminded his team-mates of TV presenter Dennis Norden.

Good luck Nord - you'll need it.

2nd and 3rd para above draw on Martin Samuel's Daily Mail column on 14 November.