Sport

Lee Carsley, the anti-wordsmith, may just be England’s most relatable manager

In his repetitions, self-contradictions and slips, the interim coach is a picture of discomfort – and understandably so

Lee Carsley during England's Uefa Nations League fixture against Finland in Helsinki. Photograph: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images
Lee Carsley during England's Uefa Nations League fixture against Finland in Helsinki. Photograph: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images
Jonathan Liew
Mon Oct 14 2024 - 20:13

Winston Churchill was not a socialist. You know this. I know this. And yet here I am, 18 years of age, inexplicably using my lips and my vocal cords to formulate, in the presence of two Cambridge University history professors who most definitely know that Churchill was not a socialist, the phrase “… and Churchill, in a very real way, was himself a socialist”.

This is an entirely new sentence; an entirely new thought that I have never in my life entertained or elucidated, and which I hear for the first time as it leaves my mouth. Indeed it’s conceivable that nobody in the span of human existence has ever expressed this exact idea in these exact terms. Because Winston Churchill – and two decades on, I really can’t be clear enough on this point – was not a socialist.

On this basis, and possibly others, I was invited to pursue my history studies at an alternative establishment. And, you have to say, fair enough. Worked out fine all round. Over the years I’ve recounted this story to people, and invariably they ask: why didn’t you correct yourself? Why didn’t you say you misspoke?

But of course the brain that is capable of making that sort of error is not remotely a brain capable of fixing it in real time. Psychologists explain these moments in existential terms: the mind has essentially retrenched into pure survival mode, overwhelmed by stress and fear and threat. Prose I can do. This is the good stuff. Wins awards year on year. But speaking well, crafting a message, projecting assurance: this is a gift, an entirely separate skill. I’ve never had it. All of which is a circuitous and intensely self-triggering way of explaining that I know exactly how Lee Carsley feels.

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“I tried to make it as clear as I could,” Carsley explained after the 3-1 win over Finland on Sunday night, and devastatingly this might actually have been true. Carsley is by all accounts a lovely guy, an eminent coach who has earned the small window of opportunity he has been granted by the Football Association. But when it comes to oratory – an underrated and indispensable attribute for any England manager – perhaps it is sufficient to observe that Fabio Capello might finally have competition.

Often fans like to assume that the media are unduly cruel to England managers, desperate to stick in the knife. But in one important respect, the press corps have done Carsley a lavish favour. Because if a Carsley answer were ever to be transcribed in its faithful entirety, it would read like a cross between a James Joyce novel and a migraine.

Lee Carsley ahead of England Nations League game against Finland on Sunday. Photograph: Bradley Collyer/PA
Lee Carsley ahead of England Nations League game against Finland on Sunday. Photograph: Bradley Collyer/PA

Take this from Sunday night, in which Carsley attempts to clarify his own comments made minutes earlier on ITV, in which he apparently ruled himself out of the full-time England job. “Yeah, I think it ... the point that I was, that I was, that I was trying to make. Which, um, I suppose, was more like the ‘hopefully’ comment. It was the, it was the fact that this is a world-class job, um, this will be up there with the best jobs in football, so, you know, whoever gets this is going to be at a high level,” he said.

Carsley stutters a lot. He repeats himself a lot. He contradicts himself a lot. He says things he immediately wishes he hadn’t, like the fact that the strikerless formation against Greece had only been rehearsed for 20 minutes. Occasionally he forgets the original question and veers into an entirely different topic. And this is in no way a judgment on his intellect or his education or his upbringing or his coaching ability, still less on his character. I know Carsley because in this respect alone I am Carsley. Game recognise game, and this particular game appears to be a kind of rolling terror, a distressing interrogation in which lights are shone in his face while various men drawl at him: “But what do you want? What do you actually want?”

Which is actually pretty rare in the modern game, when it’s almost assumed that managers – even the bad ones – will be sharp communicators, televangelists in tracksuits. Where the job itself, from interview to team talk to press conference, is essentially a speaking role, an act of persuasion. You can delegate training to your coaches, research to your analysts, transfers to your scouts and sporting director, the football itself to your players. But up there on the dais, there’s no hiding place.

Perhaps this is doubly true for an England manager, whose every utterance is disproportionately parsed and scoured, who fairly or not is expected to be a figurehead, to lead by word as well as deed. Gareth Southgate was not a naturally confident public speaker, but gradually honed his act until he perfected the art of saying nothing very wisely. Alf Ramsey was a superb orator, all smooth well-paced sentences and pauses for effect. Glenn Hoddle was a first-rate footballing mind but merely average as a footballing mouth, and it proved the undoing of him.

But by the time they reach the top of the club game, most coaches have been able to finesse their communication skills, forge their persona in the white heat of combat. And then you have Carsley, whose first big job happens to be the biggest job, who really just wants to be on a training pitch coaching great footballers, and instead keeps getting asked about national anthems, or whether he wants to be the England manager, and blurting things out at random because this is what most normal people would do in this deeply abnormal situation.

Perhaps it says something about our spiel-obsessed age that Carsley is being damned as much on his words as his football, as much on the artifice as the substance. Perhaps Carsley is right and the job really does deserve a garlanded world-class coach. Perhaps the Greece game really was so monstrously bad that his shadow must never darken an England dugout again. Perhaps this whole harrowing experience has put him off big-time management for life. And, you know, probably for the best in the long run. But as a fellow rhetorical bantamweight, I don’t think I’ve ever found an England manager more relatable. – Guardian