For too long, England was fixated on the idea that there is one magic way of doing things to make the national side an indomitable force. From listening to Charles Reep to endlessly chasing the German model or the Spanish template or whatever other country is in vogue, England has always been looking for that one particular system, the secret formula that would unlock everything and make it all seem good and fine.
Yet England’s resurgence has come at a time when we have never had a more varied set of coaches in English football: nationality, playing background, coaching background, personality, length of service, and perhaps most crucially, playing style. (Sadly, we still have a long way to go on race and gender.)
If the current league tables prove anything, it’s that there’s no one way of doing things that will always prove more successful than everything else. There are two clear examples doing unexpectedly well in the Premier League: this year’s surprise packages, Bournemouth and Watford, who both sit level on points with Manchester United.
The routes those clubs respectively took to reach the top half of the table could hardly be more different, yet they have converged this season. Bournemouth have had the same manager in charge for seven of the last nine years and a generally very settled playing squad, many of whom have been with the club since they were in League One or the Championship.
Watford, meanwhile, have had a revolving door for both players and staff: since Eddie Howe returned from his sojourn to Burnley in October 2012, Watford have had nine head coaches and a huge amount of player turnover: the vast majority of their current squad joined the club in summer 2016 or later, with Troy Deeney their only player with at least five years under his belt.
Let’s take another example. If you went by current form, and relegated the Premier League’s current bottom three, you would lose a set-in-his way old Brit, a talented young German straight from the Borussia Dortmund reserve team, and an eccentric but oddly charismatic foreign elder statesman. If you also promoted the Championship’s current top three to replace them, you would gain a set-in-his way old Brit, a talented young German straight from the Borussia Dortmund reserve team, and an eccentric but oddly charismatic foreign elder statesman.
It may seem strange to highlight that, given that the point of this piece is to underline the variety on offer; but the point here is that these diverse philosophical and stylistic differences are not just confined to the Premier League, but are now spreading into the Championship. Given how many future England internationals play at least some football in that division on their way up, that is hugely important.
English football may have complained long and hard about foreign coaches taking English jobs, but there is scarcely a country in the world that has needed it more than England. Players are no longer being turned out by one system that may or may not be based on some hugely spurious mathematics; they are emerging from a truly eclectic mix of football educations.
The logical and eventual consequence of this is that our need to rely on foreign coaches will surely diminish as the current generation of players starts moving into coaching. The first tranche is already there, and by-and-large they’re doing pretty well for themselves.
Travel broadens the mind, as any tedious gobshite who has just taken a gap year can tell you at great length, but you can’t send a whole league abroad – so bringing overseas expertise in was the only way English football could have grown from what it was in the 1980s.
Might it be the case that after a generation or two of foreign coaches, English football might finally be gaining its much-needed cosmopolitan education, and can begin to once against stand on its own two feet?
Steven Chicken is on Twitter
