English FA Eyes Guardiola As Southgate’s Replacement

The Football Association are prepared to hire an interim England manager for a year in order to appoint Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola as Gareth Southgate’s replacement.

Southgate resigned as Three Lions boss on Tuesday after eight years in charge.

He led England to a second European Championship final but once again fell short as they lost 2-1 to Spain.

Also, he guided the Three Lions to a semi-final and quarter-final places at the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

The race is now on to appoint his successor with Eddie Howe, Graham Potter, Lee Carsley and Mauricio Pochettino high on the FA’s shortlist.

While there has been plenty of fan and pundit support for the hiring of Guardiola, landing the Manchester City boss has always been viewed as a wild fantasy rather than a realistic prospect.

A large reason for this is the desire to appoint a new manager before England’s next fixtures in September and Guardiola is contracted to City until next summer and could yet extend his stay at the Etihad.

However, the Independent (via Metro) report that there is a growing feeling that Guardiola will call time on his City career at the end of the upcoming season.

As such, the FA are prepared to wait for the 53-year-old if they feel there is a chance they can hire him in 2025, and will appoint an interim manager to oversee the national team until then.

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That would likely be England U21 boss Carsley, which would also give him the opportunity to try out for the senior job if Guardiola became unattainable.

Guardiola has previously stated his interest in going into international management at some stage, and is already very familiar with some of England’s top players like Phil Foden, Cole Palmer, John Stones and Kyle Walker.

He has no interest in become Spain manager however due to identifying as a Catalan instead, though the La Roja job is unlikely to be available for some time anyway given their Euro 2024 triumph.