About this blog

Sport lends itself to statistics, opinions and a lot of money. Interestingly, these three rarely tally. I aim to shed a little light on the area of sports statistics to prove (or otherwise) the perceived wisdoms of sport.

This blog is for day-to-day observations. My other blog, www.minto.net (see links on the right) is where I put longer pieces of research.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Englishman for the England job?

After Steve McCLaren, who next? The debate about foreign coaches has started again, with Arsene Wenger saying that it should be an Englishman for the England job. Perhaps he just wants to keep the spotlight off him, but does he have a point?

Of the UEFA teams - the teams in Europe - there are 54 teams in total, with 19 foreign coaches, 33 domestic and 2 jobs pending (Republic of Ireland being the other).

So, with over a third (35%) of coaches being foriegn, is England being naive to think that post-Sven, England should be managed by an Englishman? Notably, the countries that are currently seen as the "powerhouses" of Europe - France, Italy, Germany - are managed by domestic, not foreign coaches. Smaller countries tend to have foreign managers - Liechenstein, Moldova, Cyprus and Albania are in the 19. Perhaps an English manager isn't a terrible idea, it just needs to be a better manager.

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