We Can Be Euros: Who should be the next England manager?

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What did England do wrong against Spain? And should Gareth Southgate stay or go? Our expert panel casts an eye over the Euro 2024 final.

Transcript

00:00Jason brought up Graham Potter briefly there, and I suppose there's a theme in that. What

00:03Gareth Southgate has done, rather rightly or wrongly, is to sort of set up a bit of a tactical

00:08culture and a playing style with England, this sort of quite cautious possession-based playing

00:12style. It sort of all ties in with what the FA wanted to do from a technical direction when

00:18they appointed him eight years ago. Do you think that England are going in the right direction with

00:22how things are now, or should they be doing things differently from a strategic point of view?

00:26Should they get a Graham Potter in someone who likes to play a broadly similar kind of style,

00:30or should they be looking at someone who rips that up and does things very different?

00:35I think Graham Potter would be a fairly sensible shout. I think he's, obviously,

00:39there's a reason he's been out of football for a year, and he seems to have had a lot of

00:43opportunities. He was linked with Leicester, he was linked with, I think, Roma, Ajax. He seems

00:49to have kept himself very quiet, which has always made me kind of suspect he's waiting

00:56for the opportunity to have the England job. It's a hell of a bold strategy with your career,

01:00isn't it? I'm just going to sit unemployed for a year in case the very best job possible comes up.

01:04Yeah, but I think, in a way, he's probably, unless there's a big club coming up, he probably needs,

01:10he's had a year's break as well, hasn't he, from the Chelsea job, which didn't go the way he wanted.

01:16I think, before the 2022 World Cup, everybody seemed to be very much wanting Graham Potter,

01:22and then the Chelsea job's kind of damaged his stock a little bit. But that can happen to a lot

01:27of managers with Chelsea, especially how they've been the last few years. But I think he plays

01:34nice football overall. I think he'd be able to develop a lot of the players, coaching-wise,

01:38did that at Brighton. So I think it would make sense to go for somebody like that, I think.

01:45I suppose we are getting ahead of ourselves a little bit, given at the time of recording,

01:48Gareth Southgate hasn't actually given any proper indications as to whether he'll

01:52step down or not. But I suppose one thing I did want to ask about Jason was the foundations that

01:56he's laying, because he has made a big difference in terms of changing the culture, both in the

02:02playing squad and even in terms of relationship between the team and the media. And I think

02:07there's a lot of advancements he's made in terms of setting the baseline for what England can be,

02:13how good they are at major tournaments, how they prepare for major tournaments.

02:16Do you think he's giving a really strong foundation for the next manager, or do you

02:20think we're looking at someone who will want to change things? Is there anything that needs to

02:25be tweaked on that kind of baseline? I think he's definitely leaving a good

02:30foundation, isn't he? I mean, think about where England were at when he took the job.

02:34Obviously, the aftermath of the Euro 2016, that defeat against Iceland, just

02:40chaos, wasn't it? Absolute carnage, so despondent. And whoever potentially succeeds him, if he does

02:47go, is going to be taken over a team who, regardless of the way that they got there,

02:52have now been to two major finals in three years, have been in three semifinals in four tournaments.

03:00There's definitely a good foundation here. And part of that as well is the crop of players

03:06that they would be inheriting from him. There are so many wonderful players in the squad,

03:14but I think that the most important thing is the change in, obviously, you use the word culture,

03:20but I think as well, it's a change in belief. England now look as if they believe and expect

03:26that they should be reaching the last stages of tournaments, time after time after time.

03:31And that's something that just wasn't the case prior to Southgate. You know, so I do think,

03:35obviously, there are things that need change. And I think those things will need change. And

03:39regardless of if Southgate leaves or not, even if he stays, things are going to need to change

03:43if England are ever to lift a trophy again. But certainly, the broad brushstrokes of what

03:52is already there is much more positive than it was this time eight years ago.

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