The Football Association is willing to employ an interim England manager for a year in order to replace Gareth Southgate with Pep Guardiola.
Southgate quit as Three Lions manager on Tuesday after eight years and 102 games in command, an extraordinary record that culminated with a loss in the Euro 2024 final.
Eddie Howe, Graham Potter, Lee Carsley, and Mauricio Pochettino are among those on the Football Association’s shortlist to succeed him.
While there has been a lot of fan and pundit support for Guardiola’s hire, acquiring the Manchester City manager has always been considered as a pipe dream rather than a serious possibility.
A large reason for this is the desire to appoint a new manager before England’s next fixtures in September and Guardiola is contracted to City until next summer and could yet extend his stay at the Etihad.
But according to The Independent, there’s a growing sense that the former manager of Barcelona and Bayern Munich will terminate his stint at City at the end of the next campaign.
As a result, the FA intends to choose an interim manager to lead the national team until they feel comfortable hiring the 53-year-old in 2025, should that be the case.
That would likely be England U21 boss Carsley, which would also give him the opportunity to try out for the senior job if Guardiola became unattainable.
Guardiola has previously stated his interest in going into international management at some stage, and is already very familiar with some of England’s top players like Phil Foden, Cole Palmer, John Stones and Kyle Walker.
He has no interest in become Spain manager however due to identifying as a Catalan instead, though the La Roja job is unlikely to be available for some time anyway given their Euro 2024 triumph.
While it would be risky to wait on his arrival, Guardiola is widely considered the best manager working today and one of the greatest of all-time, having won 12 league titles (including six Premier Leagues), 10 domestic cups and three Champions Leagues, as well as many other honours.
Moreover, while he would miss the Nations League campaign, qualifying for the 2026 World Cup may not even begin until September next year due to a shakeup of the qualification format.
But despite his reputation, there are reservations over hiring a foreign manager, while Jamie Carragher has also mused that club success does not equal trophies on the international stage.
It feels as though we are living in a world of fantasy where international managers have years or months to work with the precise players they select, creating everyday play patterns that naturally occur when a competition arises.
Even Guardiola and [Jurgen Klopp] couldn’t guarantee the same level of success and management style with an international side as they had with their clubs. Has the experiment with Fabio Capello taught us anything?