England Under 21 boss Lee Carsley’s astonishing admission on his early days as a manager

Lee Carsley is the kind of guy who leaves a restaurant midway through a meal to sit in the car and study clips on a laptop. He’s the kind of guy who takes a break from the Christmas festivities to watch opposing teams that don’t appear on the horizon for another three months. Dedication to the craft.

He’s also the kind of guy who firmly believes England’s checkered record at Under 21 level is due for a change and there’s a determination that carries you along too. Their European Championship starts on Thursday on the southwest coast of Georgia against the Czech Republic. Batumi is overrun with casinos – ‘the Las Vegas of the Black Sea’ – but Carsley feels he has left nothing to chance in the preparation.

This is a good English team. Still, five group stage exits from the last six tournaments tell a story and Carsley was an assistant for one of them – the 2019 edition, featuring Phil Foden, Dean Henderson and James Maddison.

“I feel a responsibility to deliver good players, but also that they represent the right values,” says Carsley. “I’ve had huge highs and lows and that helps. I haven’t read it in a book or seen it on TV. I’ve lived it.

“I think the players are in good hands here. I am confident and comfortable doing it. There are a lot of bluffers out there. I could have been a very good one.’

He almost was. The 49-year-old smiles as he talks about his first senior job, as caretaker manager of Coventry City in 2013. He coached the Under 18 and Under 23 side before getting a break in League One. “We beat Bury,” says Carsley. ‘And I think: ‘Played one, won one, I’m definitely the next big thing here!’.

Carsley’s mind wandered. Take this job permanently, win promotion. “Maybe go to Blues (Birmingham City) then, get them promoted and maybe Everton. But then we played against Swindon.’

Carsley found he wasn’t ready when he paced around the manager’s office at the Ricoh Arena during half time of that Swindon game. Coventry led 1-0, but he knew it. “I couldn’t figure out what system Swindon was playing,” he says. “We couldn’t get near them. I hear the boys yelling at each other in the locker room. I think: “My God, I can’t figure it out”. You go in… “You have to tighten up, work harder, play with more passion”. I thought I got away with it.’ He didn’t. They lost 2-1.

“I knew I was way off base. It would have only taken one of those things, “Well, what are they doing?” and I would have been snookered. I couldn’t have gone to the tactics board and showed them. I was a newbie. I was aware that if I’m not careful I’ll be pushed beyond my capabilities and the game will spit me out.”

So he took the longer route. The route via age group teams in Brentford, Manchester City, Birmingham. A head stage coach in the FA, then England Under 20. And now the most sought-after development job of them all, though there comes a time when he wants to test himself elsewhere.

Carsley is no longer on social media, partly because someone has hacked into his Twitter account and he can’t be bothered to regain control – presumably too busy with scouting tool Wyscout – and partly because of its nature.

He was shocked by the criticism of Georgia’s friendly defeat in November 2021 when he made nine changes, something he regrets. He was initially only on Twitter to promote a Down syndrome charity, something close to his heart after his second son, Connor, was diagnosed as a baby in 1999.

That changed his life. “It affected the whole family,” he says. “I was quite selfish as a player. I didn’t know about special needs because it didn’t affect me. I was pretty sheltered in that if you went to the hospital (for an injury), you went to a specialist. A car brought you in, waited, you went straight in, back in the car and gone. We went from that to, “No, this is the real world, if you want a speech therapist, you have to get in line with everyone”.

“That probably doesn’t sound right, but it was different from what we had always done. It made me much more aware of the bigger picture, the bigger world, more aware of how much support families need. Money is important, of course, but it didn’t help us.

“To make Connor walk, he didn’t just…” Carsley snaps his fingers. “My wife and some of the carers probably took three or four years of physical therapy to get to this point.

“That was pressure and responsibility. You can’t compare, but I would feel much more pressured in that regard than in this job. But it’s totally different. I still care deeply about what I do here.”

As the tournaments progress, none can be more memorable than Carsley’s World Cup experience in 2002. Saipan and Roy Keane. The blazing feud with Mick McCarthy, the sloppy training camp. Amazingly, the Republic of Ireland only went to Spain on penalties.

In something that would never happen now, Carsley was the first rep to talk about Keane’s hastily packed bags. “At the press conference the next day, me and Jason McAteer stood in front of the world’s press,” he laughs. ‘No preparation. Nobody prepared. Just bite through.

“A lot of the guys seem to have different memories of how dramatic it was depending on who they talk to! It was clearly a big problem. A huge deal. I probably saw another midfielder gone, I have more chance to play!

“We didn’t have the support around the team now. I don’t know if that was good or bad. We didn’t take any balls to begin with. It’s not a good start. The kit showed up two or three days later. You get to work with it. It was funny.

“The extra stuff has made the players more athletic now, but maybe took a little bit of the springiness out of what we had to do. There was no such thing as Wyscout, so Mick couldn’t see everyone all the time. You would look in the newspaper to see what grade a player has been given. I used to get a lot of fives, so that wasn’t ideal!’

Carsley was a talented but old-fashioned midfielder. He started as a winger, moved back to full-back and eventually found a home at center. Underrated, especially when he teamed up with Thomas Gravesen at Everton. There is always an air of self-mockery and self-talk has taken some practice.

The main thing Carsley is trying to communicate is that this England team is not operating in the image of Carsley the player, but Carsley the coach. Predecessors have tried to expand and intensely squeeze property for the quality at their disposal, but never seemed to have studied that art.

“When I started coaching, I would say my first two or three months at Coventry, I coached the way I played,” he says. “We were pretty mid-block, kind of passive in our presses. Direct, fast attacks.

“Then I almost had that lightbulb moment of, ‘No, we need to be more on the ball, we need to attack more’. Part of that would come from a study visit to Barcelona and watching Pep Guardiola. Pep didn’t call me to say, “Would you like to come?” — I was in a group of maybe 50-60 people, the general public. It had a profound effect on me. We were able to check out the 18’s, 16’s and see the style that carried over. I remember thinking: “I really like this, I would really like to coach like this”.’

So he did. City called not long after Guardiola arrived in England. Watching the Under 18 session from time to time, Guardiola wanted to know how the likes of Foden and Jadon Sancho – with Cole Palmer, James McAtee and current Under 21 captain Taylor Harwood-Bellis right behind him – were faring.

“It was the equivalent of the Wizard of Oz going behind the curtain at the very end,” says Carsley. ‘I think: ‘My God’. Lucky enough to see some of the senior sessions and see how easy it was. You want to see something strange and wonderful. But it doesn’t exist. It’s so simple but so to the point.’

That’s what he wants here. Simply, not another disappointment.