England statement offers Klopp ‘hope’ for ‘plain and simple’ top choice as Southgate successor

There’s a bit happening, isn’t there? Today the media is busy pretending Jurgen Klopp might be England’s next manager and that Sven-Goran Eriksson was as bad as Fabio Capello and Steve McClaren. Mediawatch’s gears have been inevitably ground.

Job Hope
Pretty stiff competition out there this morning for Most Egregiously Contorted Headline of the Day around the England manager’s job, but hard to look past this spectacular effort from the Daily Star:

Jurgen Klopp’s stance on England job made clear with statement suggesting hope

We could spend all day on this but let’s not muck about. We know it’s b*llocks, you know it’s b*llocks. Let’s get through this. Klopp’s ‘stance’ on the England job is the same as his stance on any job: he’s not doing any of them for at least the next 12 months.

So what’s this ‘hope’, then? Fittingly, it’s a massive Reach.

Because the statement that provides this hope is nothing at all to do with anything Klopp has or (more accurately) hasn’t said, but rather England’s statement which says there is ‘an interim solution in place if it is needed’ for the job.

It’s very obviously and necessary that this is the case, given the fact England’s next match is only eight weeks away. But, Mediawatch will grudgingly concede, if you squint hard enough you could just about pretend that the FA statement could technically be read as meaning they’ll appoint an interim manager for a year before Klopp is available to come in and take over.

If the FA were to appoint a temporary manager and aim to secure Klopp next summer, he could feasibly be at the helm in time for the first World Cup 2026 qualifiers.

So do we at least have some hint he would be up for that scenario you’ve just made up, then? To offer this hope?

Even then, there’s no certainty he would take the England role if offered.

It doesn’t sound like a lot of hope, does it?

Rocket surgery
But at least that Star news story does acknowledge the many and obvious difficulties that exist in appointing Jurgen Klopp England manager at this time.

Because their very own Jeremy ‘Very’ Cross has managed to strip all those away in a quite magnificently angry column that refuses to countenance the existence of a single obstacle in the FA’s way.

The decision couldn’t be more obvious if it punched Mark Bullingham in the nose.

A quite literally punchy start.

The FA chief executive needs to find a new England manager following Gareth Southgate’s resignation. And one bloke is available for nothing, who also just happens to be one of the best in the world.

Hmm, might not need buying out of a contract but pretty sure he would still want paying, Jeremy. And probably quite a lot more than the £5m a year Southgate was earning.

Step forward Jurgen Klopp. England need someone capable of getting them to that final frontier. To overcome the last hurdle of winning a major tournament. And the former Liverpool manager would be the ideal fit.

Fine, but we’re pretty sure he gets a say in this. And what he’s said and never deviated from is that he’s not managing anyone for the next 12 months.

Those who run the United States national team are on a mission to get Klopp themselves, ahead of joint hosting the 2026 World Cup. And if Team USA manage to lure the German across the Atlantic, instead of him being persuaded to travel to London instead to take charge of England, then Bullingham should resign.

He’s already turned the USA down. Because he’s not managing anyone for the next 12 months. Calm down, man.

Football isn’t rocket science. Neither should be deciding who the next England manager is. It doesn’t matter where the right candidate comes from. Or who he’s managed before.

Interesting to suggest that Klopp’s success at Liverpool isn’t actually relevant at all, when it would appear to be really very central indeed to his suitability for the job.

And do you know what else isn’t rocket science? JURGEN KLOPP DOESN’T WANT THIS OR ANY OTHER JOB FOR THE NEXT 12 MONTHS.

The FA should appoint the best man for the job. Plain and simple.

But it’s not plain and simple, is it? If the best man for the job doesn’t actually want the job? ‘Klopp is the best candidate’ is an entirely uncontroversial view; ‘Klopp is the best candidate and it is easy and straightforward for the FA to appoint him’ is batsh*t. It’s madder than yesterday’s two reasons why he might be up for it.

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Done deal
But the Star’s intrepid news hounds and noisy opinion havers are some way behind the Express, who tell us the next England manager has in fact already been ‘decided’.

England’s next manager decided as FA told to pick between three bosses

That ‘three bosses’ bit is weird, though, isn’t it? If it’s already been decided?

Because, of course, nothing has been decided. Unless the FA have rather unexpectedly ‘decided’ to sub-contract the decision-making on the next England manager to Daily Express football journalists who can’t even decide among themselves whether it should be Jurgen Klopp, Eddie Howe or Graham Potter.

Numberwang
And it gets worse for the Express. With their writers unable to ‘decide’ between three really quite obvious names for the job, it turns out there are actually four contenders, and none of those four are actually Jurgen Klopp, despite the plain simplicity of his unrivalled claim.

England have four options to replace Gareth Southgate as bombshell exit confirmed

This must also be the most widely expected and anticipated ‘bombshell exit’ on record, but never mind that now.

Because why stop at four? Next stop, pretty obviously given the headline length, is the Daily Mail.

Revealed: The leading candidates to replace Gareth Southgate as England manager – with Graham Potter and Mauricio Pochettino two of THREE ex-Chelsea bosses on five-man list which includes Under 21s boss Lee Carsley

But why stop at five? To the Guardian we go:

Six contenders to succeed Gareth Southgate as England manager

But why stop at six? To the i:

Seven contenders to replace Southgate as next England manager

Fair play for the outside-the-box thinking that led them to include Gary O’Neil as the seventh.

But maybe next time don’t put that bit right below the info box with the latest odds that show O’Neil is currently a bigger price than, among many, many others, Sarina Wiegman, Michael Carrick, Will Still, Wayne Rooney and Frank Lampard?

Men with Sven
Mediawatch was always likely to be grumpy this morning, given the events of yesterday and the inevitable Gareth Southgate eulogies filling the nation’s column inches, but we are nevertheless slightly surprised by what specifically has so dangerously heated our p*ss.

Because nearly all these largely identical, by-the-numbers (‘good man’… ‘tournament record’… ‘team culture’… ‘agonisingly close to glory’… ‘made us believe again’… ‘fans falling back in love with the England team’…) make the same mistake.

While understandably contrasting England’s tournament fortunes under Southgate with the often barren wastelands that went before, the name Sven-Goran Eriksson is frequently bundled in with all the post-Venables rubbish managers who did rubbishly.

And Mediawatch simply will not accept that.

Andy Dunn in the Mirror lazily lumps him in with Fabio Capello as a ‘calamitous’ foreign here.

Forget the celebrated continental coaches – after the calamitous and obscenely expensive tenures of Sven Goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello, that idea should never ever be resuscitated.

Sven took England to three tournament quarter-finals in a row, two of them at World Cups, and was narrowly beaten in all three. If we’re quite rightly going to acknowledge Southgate’s near-misses as legitimate achievements then Eriksson’s time cannot be so airily and lazily dismissed as calamitous.

But Dunn is far from alone in his convenient revisionism.

It’s there in The Sun:

I followed England through the Sven Goran Eriksson era, on to Steve McClaren, then Fabio Capello and Roy Hodgson.

None of them could hold a candle to Southgate.

And the Mail:

That was the England of managers such as Sven Goran Eriksson, Fabio Capello and even, a decade later, Roy Hodgson. A bad environment and at times even worse results.

One of these things is not like the others.

Follow the leader
Elsewhere, Andy Dunn also makes a perfectly decent argument for England’s successful Under-21 boss Lee Carsley as Gareth Southgate’s natural replacement, but it’s been given a curious headline.

England can follow Spain’s lead to find Gareth Southgate’s perfect successor

Typical England, isn’t it? Having to copy other countries in a desperate bit to find the winning formula. Can’t ever think of their own idea, can they?

You’d certainly never find England promoting from within and giving their Under-21 manager the big job.

Poll tax
We’re just putting this headline here as a placeholder to remind us and you to keep an eye out for the sh*thouse story the Daily Express will soon cobble together from the inevitable results (see Mediawatches passim).

Should England’s next manager be English after Gareth Southgate exit? Vote now!

MORE ON ENGLAND FROM F365
👉 Kane warned Southgate over England squad ‘worry’ as ‘overpowering’ star got ‘preferential treatment’
👉 Five England players who might be relieved to see the back of Gareth Southgate
👉 Southgate rescued the FA from themselves after Allardyce; England need better plan than Hoddle this time