The man who will lead the search for Gareth Southgate’s successor, if this is indeed the end of the road for the England manager after eight years in the job, is John McDermott, an experienced academy coach and player developer in his first role with a senior team.
McDermott, 55, is close to Mauricio Pochettino whom he knew from his days at Tottenham Hotspur where the former spent 15 years – which coincided with the Argentinian’s time at the club. It was McDermott who was in charge of the academy through its most successful years, in particular the breakthrough of Harry Kane 10 years ago. Now, with the Football Association facing its first major decision around the senior men’s team since it sacked Sam Allardyce almost eight years ago, it is McDermott who is in charge.
He has kept a low profile since rejoining the FA in March 2020, in his third spell at the organisation – although now he will be thrust into the spotlight whether he likes it or not. The roles of FA executives have many elements although in the public view their success or otherwise tends to be dominated by the England managers they appoint.
Allardyce, for instance, was hired primarily on the recommendation of the FA chief executive of the time, Martin Glenn. Allardyce’s departure was advocated one game later chiefly on the word of the new FA chairman at the time, Greg Clarke. In 2012, Roy Hodgson was appointed by an FA board of four that styled itself as ‘Club England’ and resisted the temptation to give Harry Redknapp the job. Another former FA chief executive, Brian Barwick, thought he had appointed Luiz Felipe Scolari in 2006 only to end up with Steve McClaren.
McDermott and Mark Bullingham, the current FA chief executive, are likely to reach a decision on the successor to Southgate, should it come to that, and then present that to the FA board. Debbie Hewitt, the first woman to chair the FA in its history, will have to approve that decision – although it would be some surprise were the board to reject it.
McDermott’s first spells at the FA came before the building of St George’s Park and the revolutionising of the junior and senior team under one of his predecessors, Dan Ashworth, and Southgate, in the early part of the last decade. Then McDermott was academy director at Spurs, one of the more prodigious developers of players for England’s junior teams. McDermott was known for a degree of scepticism towards the FA at the time.
It caused some surprise when he chose to rejoin them in 2020, first as assistant to Les Reed, the immediate successor to Ashworth as technical director, and then later as Reed’s successor. The FA was in the midst of difficult Covid cuts and that presented major challenges to an organisation that had invested heavily in its junior teams and the support staff around those.
European Championship success with the Under-21s
Unlike Ashworth, who oversaw the men’s and women’s game, as well as coach education, McDermott’s responsibilities are only for the men’s senior team and junior sides. His greatest success thus far was last summer when the Under-21s men’s team winning the FA’s first European championship in that age group since 1984 in Georgia. Lee Carsley’s team won the tournament without conceding a goal and beat Spain in the final. Two of the players, Cole Palmer and Anthony Gordon, made Southgate’s Euro 2024 squad one year later.
There is no doubt that Carsley has done a good job but it remains highly unlikely the Birmingham-born former Republic Of Ireland international follows Southgate as the manager of the senior team. The Football Association of Ireland has tried to appoint Carsley but he remained with the Under-21s this season. The Under-21s job has to be one possible pathway to the senior team job – with Southgate having walked that path himself.
Bullingham has said that the FA will consider a non-English candidate as manager of the team, despite a determination in the England DNA document launched by Ashworth that future managers, post Fabio Capello, be native coaches. McDermott has given just one interview since taking the job, to The Telegraph and others in May last year, in which he said that he had built on the original Ashworth plan, with “DNA Plus”.
England senior men play Ireland in the first Nations League game in Dublin on Sept 7, which means that if Southgate does quit this week, there is limited time to get a new man in place unless the FA are prepared to appoint an interim. The World Cup 2026 qualifying campaign begins in March.