The football gods decreed that Lee Carsley’s first outing as a senior international manager, albeit on an interim basis, will be on September 7th in Dublin for England against Ireland. And not the other way round.
There are many differences between the Football Association of Ireland and their English counterparts in the FA. One of them is succession planning.
Last January, when the Lee-Carsley-to-replace-Stephen-Kenny narrative was gaining traction, the Daily Mail ran a story about the former Everton and Ireland midfielder being committed to his position as England under-21 coach. The report stated that Carsley was being lined up to succeed Gareth Southgate after Euro 2024.
The FA have warmed to promoting from within, mainly because Southgate proved the most successful England manager since his step up from the under-21s in 2016 (Sam Allardyce lost the job after just one game in the wake of a newspaper sting).
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Yet when Carsley, who won 40 caps for Ireland between 1997 and 2008, guided the under-21s to a European title last year, beating Spain 1-0 in the final, a return to his international roots seemed like a natural progression. The presumption being that a proven club manager such as Graham Potter, Eddie Howe or even Pep Guardiola would succeed “Sir Gareth”.
Carsley did meet the FAI recruiters, led by director of football Marc Canham, before deciding his career was better served on the grass at St George’s Park.
“I went to speak to [the FAI],” he revealed last March. “Really informal, enjoyable, for around an hour. It went no further. It was good to see what their thoughts were and to explore whether I was ready to take that next step. It just went no further. I didn’t push it.”
Canham subsequently stressed that Heimir Hallgrímsson was actually the FAI’s main target to lead Ireland into the 2026 World Cup qualifiers. Maybe so. But Carsley’s long-standing desire to manage Ireland can be deduced from a collection of Irish Times columns he penned 12 years ago.
“I would love to hear about a new on-field strategy for Irish football going forward,” he wrote after Giovanni Trapattoni’s team crashed out of Euro 2012, losing all three group games to Croatia, Italy and Spain. “Most importantly, it has to be the same style of play from the bottom up. Our representative teenagers must play the same all the way through the ranks so promotion into the senior squad is seamless.”
Canham has branded this very idea as “the green line”, since switching from his role overseeing Premier League academies in 2022. Carsley had the same blueprint to hand because both he and Canham helped implement it across the English game.
“At Coventry City, we have a coaching methodology that starts at under-10 right up to the first team squad,” said Carsley. “This is nothing new at the best clubs all over the world.”
The Sky Blues were the last stop on his 18-season, five-club playing career. It was 2011 and the native Brummie with a Cork granny was already covered in coaching badges. So impressed were Coventry by the 37-year-old, they kept him on staff as youth team coach.
When Ireland reached their first major tournament in 10 years, at the 2012 Euros in Poland and Ukraine, The Irish Times recruited Carsley to analyse the performances in Poznań and Gdańsk.
Some guest columnists are hard work. Others provide a window to the psyche of professional athletes. Carsley fit in the latter category.
Twelve years later, following stints as caretaker manager at Coventry, Brentford, Birmingham City and a season working under Guardiola as Manchester City’s under-18 coach, before filling specialist roles within the English FA, his ambition still shines off the page.
“I’m not buying into the theory that we don’t have any world-class players so therefore can’t expect to live with Croatia, Spain and Italy,” he wrote. “Greece won the Euros without a world-class player. What they did have was a well-organised structure where everyone knew their job and believed what the manager was telling them.”
Remarkably, Carsley identified a weakness in the greatest Spanish side ever assembled. Ireland had already been humbled by Croatia but his column laid out a plan to squeeze a result by targeting Xavi, Iniesta, Xabi Alonso and Sergio Busquets at source.
“If I was in the Ireland camp this week, I would sit and watch the 10-man Chelsea performance at Camp Nou in the Champions League semi-final,” he said, highlighting the 2012 classic that finished 3-2 to Chelsea on aggregate despite John Terry’s first-half red card.
“Chelsea were compact and had a unity of purpose. If Messi (Iniesta largely fills his role for Spain) went past somebody, another challenge came flying in almost immediately.
“Ireland are predictable but so are Spain,” he added. “They never alter from their philosophy, even when they fall behind.”
Carsley had just returned from Barca’s La Masia academy, where he also watched Guardiola train the first team.
“Everyone goes on about their passing, the tiki-taka style, but what really impressed me is the emphasis both Barca and Spain put on winning the ball back. It is a pressing game using the six-second rule. When they lose possession the best time to win it back is those next six seconds.
“But it is more complex than that. When they are not in possession they immediately fill the gaps, blocking the passing channels, aiming to intercept more than tackle.”
Having last worn a green shirt against Brazil at Croke Park in 2008, he was aghast at the flatness of each performance at Euro 2012. Unlike other media commentators, when Spain trounced Ireland 4-0, Carsley went in search of solutions.
“As a young coach I’d love to sit down with Giovanni Trapattoni and pick his brain about the rigid loyalty to a game plan that was blatantly malfunctioning. I respect him for what he has achieved at all levels of football but I’m baffled by his thought process.
“I do sessions where one group is constantly defending wave upon wave of attacks. That’s what the entire Spanish game looked like; an exercise in defending and then booting clear. Last five minutes stuff when you are 1-0 up.
“I’m always thinking about how a team should set up,” he continued. “I go to sleep rolling it around in my head, dream about it and wake up scribbling down ideas over breakfast. Can’t help it. After the Croatia and Spanish games, I couldn’t help it either.”
Carsley went deeper: “What would I do if put in charge of the Republic of Ireland [against Spain]?
“I would have instructed Aiden McGeady and Damien Duff to crowd the full backs, with Robbie Keane targeting the weaker Spanish centre back. Piqué has more of a tendency to take risks so that’s the guy you go for. It would have given Robbie an opportunity to inspire his team-mates. The ball would have ended up at Ramos’s feet but every Irish player would know this in advance and could adjust their position. Eventually Iker Casillas would have been forced to kick it long. Then they would find themselves in our football environment.”
The last sentence encapsulates iconic Irish performances from Stuttgart to Giants Stadium but Carsley also emphasised the importance of players being able to switch systems mid-contest.
“If the full press up the field didn’t work out, we could have gone to Plan B. Let their centre back have the ball but tighten up elsewhere. The third option would’ve been to drop back and get our shape. This is what we did. But it was all we did.
“In football the ability to adapt is paramount,” he continued. “I learned an awful lot about coaching from David Moyes at Everton. David would shout ‘change’ from the sideline several times in a game. We’d immediately go 4-3-3. Twenty minutes later, ‘change’ would see us revert to 4-5-1 to stop them overrunning us in midfield. When we got a grip of that area, ‘change’ would allow us switch to 4-4-2.
“We’d constantly work on this in training. David was noticing weaknesses in the opposition or reacting to their changes. He was having his battle with the other manager.”
The Trapattoni approach resulted in Ireland scoring one and conceding nine goals at Euro 2012, yet it is worth noting that Spain and Italy met again in the final. Spain cut loose, again winning 4-0, as Ireland limped away with grave concerns about the future of the game in this country.
“We haven’t seen the spirit we are famed for or the commitment to a cause,” Carsley wrote. “I refuse to accept these occasions have overawed this group of players, but something is not right.”
He was conscious to never criticise former team-mates by name, following his own inconsistent Ireland career, which shapes how he coaches a player struggling to transfer club form to an England shirt.
“I couldn’t replicate my club form at international level,” he has said repeatedly. “I’m not sure why that was, but I think about it a lot.”
There was his costly hand ball at Lansdowne Road in a Euro 2000 play-off as Tayfun Korkut equalised from the resultant penalty and Turkey qualified on the away goal rule. At the 2022 World Cup, Carsley only got seconds off the bench against Saudi Arabia despite Roy Keane’s pre-tournament departure, with Mick McCarthy preferring Matt Holland and Mark Kinsella. He retired from international football in 2005 only to return to Steve Staunton’s starting XI for the Euro 2008 qualifiers.
“If I’d paid thousands of Euro to follow Ireland in Poland, I’d be fuming,” he concluded. “I tell the young players at Coventry: there is a way of losing. Force the opposition to raise their game to beat you.
“Opposing managers used to hate playing against Ireland because they knew what was coming. Be shattered afterwards so you can look the supporters in the eye.”
Lee Carsley by the numbers…
Playing career:
1994-99 – Derby County, 138 appearances, five goals.
1999-2000 – Blackburn Rovers, 46 apps, 10 goals.
2000-02 – Coventry City, 47 apps, 4 goals.
2002-08 – Everton, 166 apps, 12 goals.
2008-10 – Birmingham City, 48 apps, two goals.
2010-11 – Coventry City, 25 apps, 2 goals.
Premier League: 282 appearances, 15 goals.
EFL Championship: 66 apps, 2 goals.
Coaching career:
2013 Coventry City caretaker – Won 3, draw 0, lost 2 (8 goals scored, 4 conceded).
2015 Brentford caretaker – Won 5, draw 2, lost 3 (12:10).
2016/17 Man City u18s – Won 25, draw 7, lost 3 (103:42) – FA Youth Cup runners up, third in Premier League.
2017 Birmingham City – Won 1, draw 1, lost 1 (3:7).
2021-23 England u21s – Won 23, draw 1, lost 5 (81:20) – won 2023 European Championships.
