Phil Neville will step down as England Women head coach at the end of his contract in July 2021
Monday 27 April 2020 13:07, UK
The Sunday Supplement panel discuss who should be the next England Women manager, whether it should be based on gender and what Phil Neville's legacy will be.
It was announced on Friday that Neville would be stepping aside as England Women head coach at the end of his current contract, which is set to expire in July 2021.
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The former Everton and Manchester United defender was expected to take charge of Team GB at the 2020 Olympics and the Lionesses for the Women's European Championship in 2021 on home soil, although both have been moved by a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Attentions will now turn to who could replace Neville, especially for the Euros, and The Mirror's chief football writer, John Cross, discussed the idea of the next manager having to be a woman.
He told the Sunday Supplement: "I think it's an odd one. It's clearly a directive put forward by Sue Campbell, who is head of the women's game.
"I actually think you appoint the best person for the job and that's not necessarily a male or female appointment. I'm surprised there's such a clear directive and I actually feel quite strongly about this that you always go for the best person for the job.
"The ideal for the men's game is that it goes through the pathway, it goes through St George's Park and of course you want to follow that. The FA wants to follow that for Gareth Southgate's successor so why not in the women's game, but I just feel you should appoint the best person possible for the role, to take on this job and to push it onto the next level because I do feel Neville has taken it on and really improved the women's national team."
Chief sports writer at the Daily Mail, Martin Samuel, believes the next Lionesses manager should be from England and wants the FA to encourage female coaches to aim for the top job.
He said: "It should be the best English-born coach for the job. I've always believed the manager of the national team should be from that country. I've never agreed with foreign managers of the England men's team. I think it's a form of cheating, not illegal cheating, but I think international football is meant to be the best of yours against the best of theirs and if it's not, what's the point of it really?
"I do believe the coach should be from that country and as this is the England women's team, I think it should be a female coach because you've got to show that this is the premier job for an English female coach, and we are going to give it to an English female coach. We're not just going to pluck someone from the men's game and give it to them because everyone has heard of you.
"I'm not saying that's why Neville got it necessarily, but you cannot just cherry pick from outside of that realm. You've got to give people encouragement and you've got to say that if you are a good coach, we've got a way forward for you. We have got a way forward for you to get the top job in the country.
"I thought we should've started after Mark Sampson but if we can't start after Sampson we'll start after Phil Neville.
"I take the point about the number of male coaches in the women's game [there being more men than women coches], but this is different. They are clubs and this is my point about international football, if it's not the best of yours then there's no point. It's no different to club football.
"Clubs can have who they want in charge. They are private companies, who appoint who they want. This is the national team, it means a little bit more.
"There is a point where you have to say If we don't set the example, who does set the example? If we don't set the example to women coaches and say we will encourage you, we will promote you to the pinnacle of your game. If the FA aren't prepared to do that then who is prepared to do that? You can't rely on the clubs to do that because they are private enterprises. It's a totally different thing being the national coach."
A number of names have already been linked with the role, including Chelsea Women manager Emma Hayes, Manchester United Women manager Casey Stoney and former USA coach Jill Ellis.
The Times' chief football writer, Henry Winter, said: "The interesting thing now is how much of a role Phil Neville has in appointing his successor. I think because of the FA pathway, I think it should be a woman who manages the England women's team and then, if you take that, you look at Stoney at Manchester United.
"You look at Hayes at Chelsea. I know she's on record as saying she doesn't want to leave Chelsea, she's got big ambitions with the club but there are some talented female coaches out there. You can also go to America and look at Ellis, who was born near Portsmouth so there are some talented candidates.
"Stoney at United with another year in management under her belt once football starts coming back is also incredibly talented. I'm sure some of the players will look at her playing pedigree as well and the number of caps she won for the Lionesses and that will be well received in the dressing room.
"The FA may not have handled it particularly well... in terms of the way they have allowed the news to come out, but they've got to move on from that and make sure they get the right person long-term."
Neville had plenty of success as England Women head coach - leading them to a 2019 SheBelieves Cup win and a Women's World Cup semi-final later that year - but since the tournament in France, has lost seven of 11 games.
Calls for his departure have increased since the World Cup, but how should Neville's legacy be remembered?
"I don't think Phil Neville did a bad job at all," Samuel said. "He's got a lot of criticism at the end of it. There's got to be a technical improvement with the England women's team because their pass completion rate isn't as good as the other leading nations, and what will happen - unless we improve the technical side of our game - is that everyone will overtake us, which is exactly what happened with the men's team.
"Once you began to take physicality out of it and once it became a much more possession-based game, we fell behind, and that's what has happened with the England team.
"The failure in Neville's regime is he hasn't managed to achieve as much in that technical area as he hoped to. He definitely wanted to make England more of a passing team and less of a team that banged it into the channels and chased it. He wanted to make them less of an old-fashioned England team and that hasn't really been seen through to the end.
"That's probably the disappointment of the Neville regime but I don't think he did a bad job, and I certainly think his intentions were right. What he aimed for is what England should be aiming for."
Cross added: "Neville's appointment to the role in the first place was met with criticism, with scepticism and I think he defied all that and did a very good job. He gave it profile, we have to accept that whether we like it or not. He was a high-profile appointment and he did really well.
"If you take the World Cup in isolation Neville deserves an awful lot of credit for the job he did. After that, clearly results have fallen away. You wonder whether that is partly because of a degree of uncertainty as to what happens next.
"It never sits well with me when there is a doubt over whether the manager is going to go or not because any uncertainty is ceased upon by the players and results tend to fade away, as happened in this case.
"I'm sure he will now look to get back into management again. It's a very strange position for him in to be in but I do think there will be takers, whether that's back in the women's game or in the men's game."
