The decision by the Football Association of England (FA) to settle on Thomas Tuchel as the new manager of the country's men's national team was met with mixed feelings.
Many pundits, including former Manchester United and Liverpool players Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher respectively, have questioned the 51-year-old German's arrival at the helm to replace Gareth Southgate, while others believe that Tuchel is the man who will end the Three Lions' drought without a major trophy - a drought that dates back to 1966 when England became world champions on home soil.
The truth is that the FA did not have many options, although they announced that they had considered 10 candidates before finally settling on Tuchel, in the face of English managers. Only 20% of Premier League managers are currently English - Eddie Howe (Newcastle), Sean Dyche (Everton), Russell Martin (Southampton) and Gary O'Neill (Wolverhampton). The alarmingly low percentage in comparison to the 1970s and 1980s, when as many as 90% of the teams in the top division were led by English managers, is indicative to a large extent of the choice of a foreign specialist.
What's more - no English manager has won the Premier League since its inception in the 1992/93 season - the last to lift the title was Howard Wilkinson, who won the title with Leeds last campaign.
English managers do not have enough success both on the domestic and European stage. While Tuchel won the Champions League with Chelsea in 2021, and separately became the champion with Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain, the situation with English coaches is radically different. The last English manager to win the FA Cup was Harry Redknapp with Portsmouth in 2008. The last English manager to triumph in the League Cup was Steve McClaren with Middlesbrough in 2004. In Europe, the situation is as follows - the last specialist to win a European trophy was Sir Bobby Robson, who led Barcelona to the Cup Winners' Cup in 1997.
Since the start of the 1992/93 season (the creation of the Premier League), only 1% of English managers have managed matches in the Champions League. By comparison, Italy is in first place with 14%, followed by Germany (11%), Spain (10%), France and Portugal (9%) and the Netherlands (8%). | BGNES
