FA can’t afford to overlook out on Guardiola once more, writes IAN HERBERT
The England manager’s job held out a fascination for Pep Guardiola more than a decade ago and when the chance to attempt to recruit him arose, the Football Association blew it.
That opportunity presented itself in 2012 when Guardiola, exhausted by four years managing Barcelona, had left the club and England had parted company with Fabio Capello.
An intermediary contacted David Bernstein, then the FA chairman, on Guardiola’s behalf, during the search for Capello’s successor, signalling the Spaniard’s desire to speak to them about the position. Bernstein was told that Guardiola, then aged 41, was willing to discuss taking the English side into the 2012 European Championships and felt he could improve the team.
The appointment of Guardiola would have been a sensational coup for Bernstein, although there was intense pressure on him and the four-man Club England board to go for an Englishman. The inquiry was not pursued. There was not so much as an exploratory conversation. The job went to Roy Hodgson instead.
This chain of events – confirmed to us at the time by two sources – was an extraordinary oversight. Even in the summer of 2012, Guardiola was the most sought-after manager in Europe, with Chelsea leading the pursuit of the double Champions’ League winner before he finally joined Bayern Munich.
An intermediary contacted David Bernstein, then the FA chairman, on Pep Guardiola’s behalf, during the search for Fabio Capello’s successor
The FA did not follow up the inquiry and instead hired former Fulham and Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson
The FA are not displaying such a staggering lack of curiosity this time, having made informal contact with Guardiola’s representatives – we now know – at the start of the season. But the next challenge is to make him the kind of offer which would appeal.
Considering Guardiola is understood to be commanding £20million a year at Manchester City – a quarter of the FA’s entire current salary outlay – it doesn’t take a genius to compute what the counter-arguments of going for Pep might be. That the FA is a not-for-profit institution, guardian of our game, in greater need of cash for the grassroots. That England are only England if an Englishman leads them. The benefits of recruiting Guardiola transcends them all.
It has been painfully evident, this past week, that England’s galaxy of talents requires a motivator, mentor and tactician to bring them to their creative and competitive best. But Guardiola’s presence would also pay an immense commercial dividend to an England who find themselves fighting for relevance, visibility and razzle dazzle in the face of the Premier League juggernaut.
His presence would bring an irresistible component to the next two tournaments. The 2026 World Cup finals, to be played across the US, Canada and Mexico, will command an immense appeal and the FA will need no reminding that the tournament marks the 60th anniversary of 1966. It will be followed by Euro 2028, played in Britain and Ireland, which England must see as their strongest chance since ’66 of winning a trophy, on home soil with a brilliant generation at their peak. There are myriad ways that a salary outlay of perhaps £16million – more than three times Gareth Southgate’s wage – would transform England.
Such an appointment would, at a stroke, also quench all the national angst about the need for an English manager to make this team a genuinely English team.
While Capello, disastrous in retrospect, and Sven Goran Eriksson were parachuted in without the faintest experience of the English game, Guardiola is, in many ways, an Anglophile – intimately acquainted with this nation, its language and its players.
Guardiola is understood to be commanding £20million a year at Manchester City – a quarter of the FA’s entire current salary outlay
The Spaniard has been managing the Premier League for the past eight years and has won six titles in that time
In 2012, there was a sense from Spain that the England job piqued Guardiola’s curiosity because of the potential cachet of succeeding where Capello and Sven-Goran Eriksson had failed. Twelve years on, there is the appeal of succeeding where managers across the span of 60 years have failed. Of being the manager who finally The English Problem.
No one will be discussing the financial outlay if the FA hires the man who can bring it home. We can only hope that, if Guardiola actually has the appetite for it, the FA won’t make the same mistake twice.
