The last 33 major domestic trophies have been shared by six different teams. Manchester City won 15 of them, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United four each. Leicester won two and the first of them is commonly referred to as a miracle.
Silverware in English football in 2024 is the preserve of the elite. And if the elite want to remain the elite, they know they cannot stop winning, so they appoint the managers who know how to win.
The exceptions have proved rare and mostly short-lived and the powerhouses at the top of the Premier League are so strong and wealthy that they don’t have to tolerate risk.
They can go and cherry-pick the best and most successful coaches from around Europe if experiments with Frank Lampard or Graham Potter do not work out.
Manchester United have lured Ruben Amorim from Sporting to replace Erik ten Hag, who they lured from Ajax to replace Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who did not take much luring from Molde in Norway.
Eddie Howe is the only English manager at a side in the top 14 in the Premier League table
Manchester United lured Ruben Amorim in from Sport to replace Erik ten Hag, while Arne Slot could afford to turn down Tottenham after winning the Dutch league with Feyenoord
Amorim has brought his own backroom staff with him from Sporting to Manchester United
Portugal and the Netherlands are football exporters. Each have three big teams and anybody who lands one of those jobs has a fair chance of winning something, which comes in handy when their agents are touting them for a better-paid job.
Having won the Dutch title with Feyenoord, Arne Slot could afford to reject Tottenham’s overtures and wait for Liverpool.
English football exports few bosses to other top footballing nations, but has never imported more. Thirteen of the top 14 clubs in the country have managers from overseas, many of them with backroom teams stacked with more overseas coaches. Amorim is expected to bring at least five with him from Sporting to Old Trafford.
How can English managers compete? They don’t win major trophies, so they cannot get the best jobs, and without the best jobs it is impossible to win major trophies.
It is a catch-22 classic. Then Thomas Tuchel lands the England job and triggers an existential crisis because there is barely an English manager to compare to his record with Borussia Dortmund, Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea.
‘I can’t see a solution,’ Howard Wilkinson admitted. ‘We can’t unwrap history. It’s become like the golden age of Hollywood. That’s the nearest comparison I can think of.
‘If you were a good actor or entertainer, the ultimate was to get to Hollywood where they paid the best money and produced the best films. The Premier League pays the best and once you enter the free market, you take the consequences that arise.’
Wilkinson is the last English manager to win the title. He did it with Leeds in 1992 before leaving Elland Road for roles at the FA, where he led the transformation of the academy system and hatched plans for St George’s Park. He has been one of the deep thinkers of his generation in English football and chairman of the League Managers Association for 33 years until he stepped down this year at the age of 80.
Domestic coaches like Frank Lampard and Graham Potter had failed stints with Chelsea
Howard Wilkinson is the last English manager to win the English top-flight doing so back in 1992
Thomas Tuchel’s appointment as England boss sparked a sort of existential crisis
When he started in professional coaching roles in the late 1970s, he feasted on a culture of shared knowledge, including annual refresher courses at Lilleshall, where legends such as Malcolm Allison, Dave Sexton, Don Howe and Ron Greenwood hosted demonstration sessions.
Howe, the last English manager appointed by Arsenal in 1983, had an endearing habit of taking aspiring young coaches aside, putting an arm around them and saying, ‘Have you thought about this?’ It also went beyond that fortnight together because rival managers forged friendships and alliances, exchanged ideas and spoke candidly after games in what were effectively weekly think-tanks, featuring the best coaching minds of the era.
David Pleat tells a story in his autobiography Just One More Goal about the time his Luton team drew at Liverpool and he spent so long in the Anfield Boot Room with coaches Ronnie Moran, Joe Fagan and Tom Saunders — sitting on crates, sharing a beer and talking football — that he made the team bus late and climbed aboard sheepishly to a slow handclap from his players. ‘People talked and you picked things up,’ Pleat told me when we met to discuss his book.
‘I was at Sheffield Wednesday for one of Arsene Wenger’s first games and I can still picture him leaning against the mini fridge, this tall man with his arms folded just listening to us talk.’
Wilkinson, Pleat, Bobby Robson, Terry Venables, Graham Taylor and many more emerged from this hothouse environment to enjoy successful careers, but the landscape has changed and will not reverse. Wenger’s arrival at Arsenal in 1996 was the catalyst for internationalisation, improving English football in many ways and making the Premier League a global hit.
The overseas influence has certainly helped improve the technical quality of our football and our players, but the coaching pathways have become more difficult to navigate.
Wilkinson hoped the national football centre at St George’s Park, opened in 2012, would help the FA recreate that knowledge- sharing hub and educate coaches, as with Coverciano in Italy and Clairefontaine in France.
It has made a positive impact, even if the appointment of a German as England manager sparked criticism about the number of qualified coaches and the cost of courses.
A quarter of all clubs in the Premier League are under the control of managers from Spain
The UEFA pro licence, the top qualification, costs £13,700 in this country and is restricted by UEFA to 24 places a season. The A licence costs £4,000, with 120 places available per season.
Costs are much less in Spain, who are this year’s measure of success. They won Euro 2024 and Real Madrid won the Champions League. A quarter of Premier League teams are under the control of Spanish managers. Costs are higher in Germany, but there is no shortage of German coaches operating at the top level.
Fees in this country will often be covered by clubs, with priority given to those working and living in England, coaching in the senior professional game and needing qualifications to meet the rules of the elite player performance plan, which governs academy coaching.
This might make it prohibitive to some and yet, as far as producing an English England manager is concerned, it doesn’t matter how many people acquire these qualifications if they cannot build relevant experience in elite competitions, as they can in other countries.
‘I speak a lot about players in our system getting the opportunity,’ England interim boss Lee Carsley said last week. ‘We’ve definitely got players in our pathway capable of playing in the senior teams and the same with the coaches.
‘Ultimately, we need opportunity. We need more English and British coaches in the Premier League, in the Championship, given that chance to show what they can do.
‘The higher the level we can coach at in terms of Premier League and Champions League, getting those experiences, the more beneficial that will be.
‘But we have to earn that position and that right. With the coaching courses and the experiences St George’s provides, we’re going in the right direction, but ultimately coaches need that opportunity.’
Lee Carsley spoke about the need for English and British coaches to have ‘opportunity’ in the Premier League
Enzo Maresca joined Chelsea this summer after spells with Leicester and Manchester City
Ian Foster earned a fine reputation as he progressed as a coach through the England age groups, but when his opportunity came at Plymouth, he was sacked after 12 games amid relegation fears.
The Championship is brutal and shortens careers. We are quick to write off homespun coaches or bill them as lower-league specialists, without seeing them manage in the top flight or only with a promoted team, condemned to struggle at the bottom.
Eddie Howe broke the cycle and is the only Brit managing in the top 14. Five of the Premier League’s bottom six managers are from these shores, but it is not their Britishness keeping them at the bottom. Swap Russell Martin’s players for Pep Guardiola’s and see whose team is nearer the top.
Meanwhile, Guardiola matters. Arsenal took a chance on Mikel Arteta as a rookie boss, his experience coaching at Manchester City supplementing the Gunners’ appreciation of his character and potential from his time as captain at the Emirates.
Chelsea’s faith in Enzo Maresca was enhanced by his work under Guardiola, as much as his Championship title win with Leicester last season.
Fabian Hurzeler is one of the Premier League’s latest imports from abroad joining Brighton this summer
Ange Postecoglou got the Tottenham job off the back of winning five trophies in two seasons at Celtic
Ange Postecoglou got the Tottenham job because he had won five trophies in two seasons with Celtic in Scotland, and nobody pretends his was a charmed path, but he too came with the City Group seal of approval, having worked for Yokohama F Marinos.
Well-run organisations such as City and Red Bull Football develop their own coaching talent through multi-club systems, to the needs of their own footballing philosophies.
English coaches such as Des Buckingham at Oxford and Liam Manning at Bristol City have come through City Group via clubs abroad, so it is open to English coaches with a sense of adventure, just as Potter cut his teeth in Sweden with seven years at Ostersund.
These are the sorts of route coaches might have to explore in greater depth if they want to crack this puzzle.
