Southgate wants English manager for England

Former England defender Gareth Southgate wants the FA to appoint an English manager to replace Fabio Capello.

The Italian is set to step down after Euro 2012 and 41-year-old Southgate believes that, in order to aid the development of young coaches, an English candidate should be sought.

“It’s all on record what I said when Fabio was appointed – that the England manager should be English,” Southgate told The People.

“My view was based on the idea that international football should be the best of our country against the best of other countries.”

“Now I’m involved in coach development, I’d also make the argument that you have to give hope and ambition to English coaches.”

“The ultimate job for an Englishman is to manage England and that career pathway should ultimately be open.”

“We’ve got to develop as many people as we can so that in 10 or 15 years’ time, there will be such a pool of talent in place that we won’t need to look elsewhere.”

The former Middlesbrough boss went on to reiterate the need to end any animosity between clubs and the national set-up.

“One thing Spain and Barcelona have proved is that you can have success for club and country,” he continued.

“Lots of big clubs realise there is a commercial value involved in their players being internationals. For every England schoolboy, it is still the be-all and end-all to be a full international.”

“We have players with 80 or 90 caps and that takes commitment. They get all the criticism for supposedly having a lack of passion but I’ve never seen that.”

“We have to accept players belong to the clubs and that we borrow them but, up to the Under-21 age group, we should be part of a player’s development.”