Forget Pep Guardiola - England may already know who their next manager should be

If you were to have polled England fans about their preference for the next permanent manager of the Three Lions both before and after this round of Nations League games, you’d have received some wildly differing answers. A chaotic defeat to Greece at Wembley followed by a less than convincing victory over Finland has seen Lee Carsley’s stock plunge, and some confusing comments to the press mean that it’s increasingly unclear whether he wants the job anyway. The FA may well look elsewhere, and that will inevitably put one particular manager’s name on a great many lips.

Pep Guardiola’s contract at Manchester City is up at the end of the year, and he has been non-committal about his future at the club at which he has won every possible trophy since taking over at the Etihad eight years ago. That may just be because Guardiola himself feels the urge to move on – he needed his arm twisting repeatedly to stay for half as long at Barcelona – or it may relate to concerns over the outcome of the proceedings relating to those 115 infamous charges. He has been bullish about the club’s innocence but implied that he would be upset should the assurances he has been given by the City hierarchy prove to be false.

Only Guardiola knows his own mind, something that he been proven many times before over the course of his career, both on and off the pitch, but he said in February that he wanted to coach at the World Cup or European Championships eventually, and the England job would offer him that opportunity.

It almost seems too good to be true, and it may well be. Firstly, England might want to get their man in before the end of the season – qualifying for the World Cup begins in March, after all, and The FA would likely need assurances that they won’t easily get to feel comfortable heading into the campaign without a head coach. Secondly, if Manchester City are found guilty of some or all of those 115 charges, then it’s possible that Guardiola’s reputation takes a hit, depending on the details, and The FA may well be wary of hiring a coach who is at the heart of a PR storm. That’s speculative concern as it stands, but it will no doubt have crossed the mind of those making the decision.

All of which may explain why there are reports that The FA have opened negotiations with Thomas Tuchel already. The source of the story is Bild, a German tabloid, and it has yet to be corroborated elsewhere, but it’s scarcely an implausible claim. Tuchel is, after all, one of the most successful coaches currently on the market. He has the cachet and the clout to take the job. And there’s a perfectly reasonable chance that he would be a better choice than Guardiola anyway.

Partly, that’s because there’s every cause to question whether the Spaniard’s methods would translate easily to the international game. The complex web of interlinked positional play that constitutes his tactical set-up is normally inculcated into his teams via a lengthy, endless stream of rondos and the compromises required could be extensive when he only has a few days at a time to work with his players. If any coach has the grasp of the game to make it work, it’s Guardiola, but there is no certainty that a generational club manager’s ideology will transfer comfortably to the England job.

Tuchel, on the other hand, is a less complicated manager. He is demanding but clear-sighted and his system is flexible without being finnicky. He’s cheerfully chopped and changed formations depending on the players available to him – a helpful attribute to have when a coach can’t manipulate the player pool through the transfer market – but stuck to key tenets throughout his career: quick passing upfield and hard pressing.

That basic philosophy, of playing football hard and fast and maximising the time the ball spends in the final third should on paper, be an easier system to imprint onto an international squad (not that co-ordinated pressing units are necessarily straightforward to implement) but it’s also, frankly, what England have been missing for some time. Southgate was a superb head coach for England, but his slow and steady style is deep-rooted now, and there have been plenty of times when this side’s inability to break at pace has been a burden. Tuchel would at least try to turn that on its head.

The end of his spells at Chelsea and Bayern Munich may have soured his reputation slightly and there is always a risk that he will fall out with his dressing room (it’s happened before, repeatedly) so calling his appointment a slam-dunk would be a distinct stretch – but he’s a clear-minded tactician with a combination of versatility and attention to detail that should translate well to international football.

Guardiola would be just about every fan’s first choice in a perfect world, and if the stars did align then it would certainly be an experiment worth pursuing. He is, unquestionably, a genius. But Tuchel is scarcely a slouch and no stars need to pinwheel precisely across the sky for it all to work out – The FA just need to pick up the phone. The only reason to query his appointment would be his infamously prickly nature. But if this England squad are up for working beneath the strictures of a demanding and criticiaal taskmaster, then Tuchel would probably be a very fine appointment indeed.