Lee Carsley reveals unusual experiment for England’s new tactics

If England’s future opponents want to conduct an unusual scouting mission, they could find themselves scouring academy training sessions in the Midlands on Friday. The tactics Lee Carsley is considering using for Harry Kane or Jude Bellingham could be road-tested on some unknown youngsters. But this, for England’s interim manager, is life as normal.

Friday, for Carsley, has meant academy coaching; the Strachan Foundation, established by his former Coventry manager Gordon Strachan and based in Warwick, is near his home. For a man who believes his greatest strength is his coaching, it enables him to work not just with England’s elite, but youngsters without a professional club. And now they might get a first glimpse of his plans.

“I’ve got a few ideas which I want to try and it’ll be no different,” Carsley said. “I’ve got ideas from here that I want to try with them, leading up to the next game. There’s still a couple of things I want to improve on in terms of out of possession. So myself and James [Ryder, England’s senior performance analyst] will go down there on Friday.”

Carsley, of course, could be working with young players on a full-time basis again if he reverts to his post as England’s Under-21 manager. But back-to-back wins with the senior side in interim charge, 2-0 against first the Republic of Ireland and then at Wembley on Tuesday night against Finland, amounted to an impressive job interview. It is, though, entirely in keeping with Carsley’s character that he isn’t getting carried away.

“My life will pretty much go back to normal when I get home later,” he said. “I can’t see it changing to be honest. I’m very grounded in terms of the most important part of this job which, for me, is the football. Making sure we create a good environment for the players to perform in. I can’t see that being any different.”

But for a down-to-earth figure who rarely courted the headlines as a player – as an effective, but unglamorous, defensive midfielder, the attention tended to go elsewhere – and who has never held a senior managerial role, there was a taste of the scrutiny that goes with England; the circus that surrounds it. The culture warriors claimed to be outraged by a decision not to sing that national anthem, even though it was consistent with Carsley’s actions in the rest of his career.

Managing England is not merely about making them more accomplished in possession, inverting full-backs or deciding whether Noni Madueke is a better winger than Jarrod Bowen. Carsley was given a taste of the complications. If the FA have a decision to make, of whether to give the England job to someone who is relatively untried in first-team management, Carsley has to determine if he wants to trade life in the shadows for the spotlight. “Am I up for it?” he mused. “I think I am up for it.”

One of the perks of the job is the chance to work with world-class talents. One is a more celebrated midfielder from the Midlands, another to play for Birmingham. Precocious as Bellingham is, his breakthrough came after Carsley’s brief spell as caretaker manager in 2017. “He was definitely too young,” said Carsley. “I was definitely aware of him. He is a player I am really looking forward to working with.”

As he is aware, he is coaching players with more talent and flair than he possessed. Carsley can be self-deprecating about his own playing career, though he was integral in helping Everton to finish fourth in 2005, but he has embraced a different type of footballer.

“When I first started coaching, I coached players like I played which, as you can imagine, wasn’t very good to watch,” he said. “Sometimes it’s difficult to adjust your eye to players who are more creative and make more mistakes, but make more chances and create more chances and they hurt the opposition more. So I’ve had to adjust to my way.”

It involves accepting some risk for the prospect of a reward. “I’ve tried to always do that,” he added. “I think we’re lucky that the first thing I look at in a player is what they’re really good at, rather than what they can’t do.”

It is the manager as a facilitator, not a dictator. Carsley is not seeking to lead through force of personality as much by careful study. His has been a fine start but he said: “I don’t think I’ll celebrate. It’s pretty much preparation now for the future. Try and get the footage from the game Greece played, we’ll debrief our games we had and use that footage for the next camp and so we move on quite quickly.”

And he will move on to an academy pitch and a group of unknowns who will find themselves testing the strategies that may be used for the England team.