For Lee Carsley, every decision is now about something bigger, no matter how outlandish it seems. Except, he still insists it is not about this great opportunity he’s been presented with.
The interim England manager explicitly rejects the speculation surrounding the full-time role, and says it’s about “the rest of the staff and the players… to try something different”.
“We’re looking at the bigger picture in terms of the World Cup qualification and then hopefully the World Cup,” Carsley said before the side’s trip to Finland, as he discussed the confusing performance in a shock 2-1 defeat to Greece.
“Our human instinct is to be safe, to go with things that you’re comfortable with but it was important that in this period I felt that I have to be out of my comfort zone, I have to try something because we’ve got to put ourselves in a position where we can win. To think that we can just do the same again and expect something different is naive.”
Such a grand aim is admirable, especially when he also makes such a striking admission.
Carsley isn’t considering any of this in the context of whether he will be there for the 2026 World Cup. He again refused to be engaged on the question of whether he even wants the job, having on Thursday said he would “hopefully” be back with the Under-21s if he doesn’t get appointed.
Carsley was even asked about that in Helsinki on Saturday, which further points to some of the extra furore about this role.
“The last thing that is important to me in this whole process is me,” Carsley reasserted.
“The reason I believe I have done so well in coaching is because people know that it’s not about me. It’s about the players, it’s about the environment, it’s about the culture. If I do try something different, they can see I’m trying it out of trying to get the best out of the team or the individual rather than myself.
“I don’t see this as an audition. I don’t see it as the biggest chance I have ever had. I see it as a privilege. I see it as an unbelievable responsibility. I have got three more games left, I want to try to make sure that the squad are in a really good position.”
The thing with Carsley is that it’s impossible not to take him at face value. He is genuinely that sort of character. No one in the game ever speaks of having an agenda or anything like it. Carsley himself even had a line to media saying “I know that you are probably used to people saying something that they don’t mean but I actually do mean that it’s most important for the team”.
It would still be only human for him to wonder “what if”. It’s hard for the rest of us not to wonder when he makes comments like how he wants to put his “own stamp on the team and the squad”.
This is where his tactical choice on Thursday was so striking, all the more so because it didn’t work. Carsley later made the surprising admission that the squad had only trained with it for 20 minutes, which didn’t exactly give it much of a chance. There is an argument it could never have worked, given the demands it asked of a series of stars – Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden, Cole Palmer – who all occupy the same area.
The only surprise is why someone as tactically as attuned as Carsley tried it. Although he is a much more innovative and attacking manager than Gareth Southgate, this seemed way too far.
That is what raises the bigger questions about whether the sheer scale of the job has an effect.
Carsley rejects the idea that the job is his “to lose”, but that has been very much the consensus. He is viewed as the preference of FA technical director John McDermott, who often sits in on every media appearance.
The weekend’s reports of talks with Thomas Tuchel are meanwhile seen as an attempt by those close to the German to put pressure on Manchester United, who have an interest if they do sack Erik ten Hag.
The sense is almost that Carsley had to get through the Nations League with England performing a little bit sharply. He had to show his tactical measure. That’s precisely what happened in his first international break but that’s also why it’s hard not to wonder whether he decided to press and go big to make the job his – even if it’s subconscious.
If it isn’t that, however, there is another question. England were close to glory under Southgate. They’d lost one final on penalties. They’d lost another to an 87th-minute winner. They lost their last World Cup game to finalists who also took that showpiece to penalties.
There wasn’t much required. Southgate had given the squad so much, from a tactical base to belief.
It has felt as if that team just needed fine-tuning, and maybe that touch more tactical imagination to amplify the squad’s quality. Carsley looked like he had all that. This is his unique selling point.
That’s why it was such a surprise that he took it so much further than he needed to go. It was a headrush when only a bit of thought was required.
None of this is to say it’s definitive, of course. It is, as Carsley himself put, just one game. There’s even the fair argument that this is actually the perfect time to experiment. No one will even remember if England go out and offer three convincing displays. That can start in Helsinki against Finland on Sunday.
It just means everyone is going to be looking at that starting line-up with even more interest. He has already insisted he won’t go as outlandish as Thursday, which maybe says even more.
