Mourinho won’t answer the question

Ok, so Steve McClaren has gone after one of the most unsuccessful 12 match runs in English football betting history and  bets turn their attention to the next manager.  Paddy Power have placed him 4/1 to replace McClaren but the sports betting world, as well as every English football fan, needs an answer to a longer term question : why can’t we produce our own international manager?

After Scotland’s heartbreak at the start of this week, England have their own to deal with now and the hurt seems to run even deeper as the thought of a Euro 2008 competition without our national side seems inconceivable. But that is reality and we now need to look to the future.

Short term, yes – Jose will be a superb manager for our team and he may well demonstrate that we do actually have the players in this country to be successful at the top level. But what about when he retires? We will still be in the same position of scratching round for a good manager from outside the UK unless something fundamental changes in this country. It would be an idea to form a football coaching academy that concentrates purely on this facet of the game and builds a pool of top level coaches from which we can then choose when the need arises.

At the moment, the FA seem to be struggling to have a strategy in place to follow when a coach doesn’t perform. Sven Erikson seemed to overstay his welcome but there was no one else who you could say would have been able to fill the post any better.

Investment in our national side’s coaching future needs to be made now. You can’t build this system in months – it takes years.