Lee Carsley: Irish player, English coach

There was a Monday morning towards the end of 1995 when Lee Carsley, then a 21-year-old midfielder with Derby County, was reflecting on his absence from the first team the previous Saturday. Carsley felt low.

Derby were in the First Division, the equivalent of today’s Championship, and at the end of that 1995-96 season, would be promoted to the Premier League as runners-up behind Sunderland. But back in the November they were struggling in the bottom half of the table and lost the game Carsley missed 5-1, away against Tranmere Rovers.

Some might think that was a good match to miss, but he was downbeat.

Then two things happened: first, Carsley received a call-up to represent his division of the Football League in an all-English team against their counterparts from Italy’s second tier, Serie B. Occasionally, colloquially, the team were known as ‘Young England’ and they played in blue shorts and white Umbro shirts, just like Alan Shearer and company at senior level. The squad was selected by David Pleat, then Sheffield Wednesday manager.

Carsley was cheered.

As he was digesting this development, a man called Maurice Setters got in touch. Setters was Jack Charlton’s assistant. Charlton was the manager of the Republic of Ireland’s national team.

Setters wondered if Carsley would accept a call-up from the Republic of Ireland Under-21s. They had a game in Portugal. On the same day as the English representative match.

Setters had made contact with Carsley earlier in the year, on behalf of the Football Association of Ireland (FAI). But the English Football Association (FA) had, too. In fact, in the February, Carsley had played 85 minutes for Pleat’s representative team in the reverse fixture in Italy. Subsequently, the FA told Derby they would be inviting him to join England’s under-21 squad for the Toulon Tournament that summer.

Carsley’s trajectory was upward. Then it was cut down by a serious injury. He was out for months, could not go to Toulon and thought his England Under-21s chance had gone.

Now he was being offered another international route, one derived from his grandparents in County Cork. Lee Kevin Carsley was born and bred in Birmingham, England’s second city, but he was aware of his Irish roots. Plus, Paul McGrath was his hero and at Derby, he was playing in the same side as the Republic of Ireland centre-back, then late in his career.

So, on November 6, 1995, Carsley had a choice to make.

“It was weird,” he told local reporters in Derby. “One minute I was down in the dumps. The next I’m thinking over which of two squads to join.”

Seeking guidance, Carsley spoke to his Derby manager Jim Smith, whose opinion was that full England international caps are hard to come by and Ireland represented an opportunity. Carsley made his decision and the next morning, he later explained, he was up at 3.30am to get to the passport office.

His trip was successful and, seven days later, he lined up for Ireland’s under-21s in a 3-1 defeat against their Portuguese counterparts in the age group’s European Championship qualifiers. It was the start of an international career that would see him earn 40 senior Ireland caps and play, for a few minutes late in a 3-0 win against Saudi Arabia, at the 2002 World Cup.

Carsley (No 22) and his team-mates during the national anthems before a game against Germany at the 2002 World Cup (Neal Simpson/EMPICS via Getty Images)

Fast forward almost three decades and, as 2024 began, Carsley again had two national options in front of him; again, one Irish, one English.

At 49 years old, he was England Under-21s head coach and had led them to the European Championship title the previous summer — a significant achievement. Following brief stints managing Coventry City, Brentford and Birmingham City, Carsley was part of the English national team structure and highly regarded within it.

But in late November, a vacancy arose at the top of the FAI when head coach Stephen Kenny lost his job after failing to qualify for Euro 2024.

Immediately, Carsley was considered favourite for the position and the interest between himself and the Irish hierarchy was mutual. There were discussions. “Really informal, enjoyable, for around an hour,” Carsley said in March. “It went no further. It was good to see what their thoughts were and explore whether I was ready to take that next step. It just went no further. I didn’t push it.”

In its home country, it is fair to say, the FAI does not have a reputation for competent governance and the managerial situation was allowed to drift under interim appointment John O’Shea until July this year. Then, former Iceland coach Heimir Hallgrimsson was finally announced as Kenny’s permanent successor.

It happened on the day England reached the final of the Euros under Gareth Southgate. The news was also public confirmation that Carsley would remain inside the English system; a month later, following Southgate’s resignation following nearly eight years in the job after defeat in that final against Spain, Carsley was made interim head coach.

And the venue for his first game in charge, this Saturday evening? Lansdowne Road in Dublin, where Carsley made his senior Irish debut in October 1997 against Romania and the great Gheorghe Hagi in a World Cup qualifier.

This weekend, he will be back, in the Aviva Stadium which now stands on that site, but in a different role in a different dressing room, the away one.

Lee Carsley: Irish player, English coach.

“We came into the squad together and we were just both happy to be there. Lee was one of the lads straight away, just a solid individual. Didn’t say too much, but he’s got a really dry sense of humour, a twinkle in his eye. It’s just crazy his first game is in Ireland.”

Shay Given was the Ireland Under-21s’ goalkeeper the day Carsley made his debut in Portugal and played in goal for the bulk of Carsley’s senior international career.

The latter began two years after the end of the Charlton era in Irish football. Charlton was English, a World Cup winner with them as a player in 1966. He was appointed by the FAI in 1986, the first non-Irishman in the post, when the Troubles in Northern Ireland were ongoing. To many Irish people, Charlton’s nationality mattered as much as, if not more than, his experience.

Charlton leads the Republic of Ireland out against England at the 1990 World Cup (Ray McManus/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

But over an exuberant, galvanising and transformational decade, Charlton changed perceptions of England in Ireland.

His tenure was marked by the arrival of players born in England and Scotland whose attachment to Ireland came via the ‘Granny Rule’. It was, and is, a legitimate ancestral route to international registration, but when players such as John Aldridge or Ray Houghton scored in the green jersey, some sniffed that they were not truly Irish.

Given was not one of them. From County Donegal, as a boy he travelled to Lansdowne Road to support Charlton’s energising teams and, once he reached international level himself, Given says nationality was not an issue: “I never spoke to any of the boys about that. I grew up in the Jack Charlton era, and it was Irish-English, English-Irish, you know what I mean? I didn’t have any issue with any of them, whether they had English accents playing for Ireland or not.”

Niall Quinn, from Dublin, was a comparative veteran of 62 caps when he and Carsley first shared the Irish dressing room. He re-iterates Given’s words, saying: “We never had a problem with any player who wasn’t born in Ireland coming into the squad. They bought into what we were trying to achieve. There was a camaraderie that was handed down from generations of Irish teams before. You weren’t entering a typical English dressing room.

“I can remember Davy Langan making sure you were Irish and you knew you were Irish. He was like the military police. Langy would have the English lads singing songs.”

Given and Quinn had fixed, natural, national identities. But for Kevin Kilbane, who would be capped 110 times by the Republic of Ireland, it was not so certain.

Like Carsley, Kilbane was born in England; like Carsley, he made his Irish debut in 1997; like Carsley, he later played for Everton in midfield alongside Mikel Arteta. Few people know Carsley so well. When Carsley began coaching at Manchester City’s academy in 2016, he stayed at Kilbane’s home there. The two may not be in touch as regularly since Kilbane moved to Canada a few years ago, but they have talked about identity before.

“Lee’s spoken in the past about players who are English-born, or who speak with English accents, having to work doubly hard to gain respect in Ireland, to be considered one of them,” Kilbane says. “I felt it. I felt it within the squad. It was the case then and could be even now, though less so.

“But definitely in the 1990s when Lee and I first got into the squad — same with Gary Breen, Dave Connolly or Rory Delap, whoever — we all would have felt that opinion of, ‘You’re not really Irish but you’re here’.

“That really grated on me, in a big way. Lee has said it himself. We didn’t then. We all felt more comfortable speaking about when we had retired from the game — it’s a lot easier. That’s not saying lads like Shay or Niall or Damien (Duff) or Robbie (Keane) would have thought that way, but maybe some players did.

“Lee’s spoken about that. But when he won the Under-21 Euros with England, no one cared if he’d played for Ireland.”

The Irish team for a Euros qualifier against Turkey in 1999, with Carsley bottom left and Kilbane bottom right (Elisenda Roig/Bongarts/Getty Images)

It mattered to Carsley. Or it did at one time.

When called up for that Irish under-21s game in 1995, he talked to the Derby Telegraph newspaper about his decision under the headline: “Why I chose Ireland.” Carsley mentioned that England had asked about his availability for the Toulon Tournament but that injury prevented him from saying yes and he said, “I could wait forever for another call.” He said his Irish grandfather was “absolutely delighted” and that he was “happy with the choice”.

Later, he would be less sure, though that was due to him having children by then and long international breaks when he was away and not in the Irish starting XI. He withdrew his availability for selection in 2004, then returned two years later.

But that was not to do with his Irish identity, which he referenced last week at England’s training complex, St George’s Park.

“It’s a really proud part of my career — 40 caps for the Republic of Ireland is something I’m proud of,” Carsley said. “I’m as equally proud of today being named interim manager. (Being) head coach of England is a massive achievement and something I don’t underestimate. But I’m definitely proud of my heritage. I was back in Cork in the summer at a family reunion.”

The village of Dunmanway is where Carsley’s Irish grandparents came from (he has English grandparents on his father’s side of the family). He has said his cousins had tried to teach him how to play Gaelic football and hurling. Dunmanway happens to be the birthplace of Sam Maguire, after whom the most prestigious trophy in Irish sport — going to the winners of the all-Ireland (Gaelic) football championship final — is named. Maguire was an Irish republican, yet he worked for the British civil service in London.

Kilbane has spoken eloquently about Irish culture in an English environment. He grew up in Preston, a town just north of Manchester. At 17, he was called up by England’s under-18s but declined the offer. When Alan McLoughlin, another English-born player who played for Ireland, died in 2021 at age 54, Kilbane told the Irish Times: “When I look back to my childhood, I felt like a fish out of water. My brother would say the same, my sister too. A lot of my friends would have felt it.

“If we had ever been asked what country we were from, never once would we have said England. We would have said Ireland. Even though we were all born and raised in Preston, that was our identity. Anyone who set foot in the door was Irish. Every family function was surrounded by Irish people. We were Irish.”

Kilbane in full flow for the Republic of Ireland against the Czech Republic in February 2000 (Michael Cooper/Allsport)

McLoughlin was important to Kilbane and, Kilbane says, to Carsley too, because he understood their situations. He was raised on Maine Road, Manchester, where City’s home ground used to be before their move to the Etihad, the son of Irish parents. There was a boy in his class at school called Noel with the same sort of background — that would be Noel Gallagher, now of Oasis fame.

Stuck in Manchester United’s reserves in the days of one substitute per team per game, McLoughlin moved on to Swindon Town at 21 without making a senior appearance. One day in February 1990, he returned from training to find two letters waiting. The FA was calling him up to play for England B. The other, from the FAI, was calling him up to play for Republic of Ireland B. The game in question, he discovered, was between the two sides.

McLoughlin rang home — Manchester — to speak to his Irish parents, Nora and Patrick.

Like Carsley over a decade later, he chose the green shirt.

“It wasn’t a debate in my head,” McLoughlin later explained. “It just seemed a natural decision. It wasn’t contrived. I have a Mancunian accent and was born in England, but I love my parents and their backgrounds. We grew up in an Irish community in Manchester; my sister was Irish dancing from a young age, my dad once took me to Old Trafford when I was very young, just to see (Northern Ireland international) George Best.”

‘Irish blood, English heart’ is an experience many have known and Carsley’s first senior England squad includes Declan Rice and Jack Grealish, both of whom wore the Republic of Ireland shirt internationally before the England one. Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham are two others in the party with Irish relatives.

Grealish did not play for Ireland past under-21 level; Rice won three senior caps in 2018, all in friendlies. He looked and sounded committed to an Irish future. But, London-born, he had an England option too, and took it.

Rice may endure a testing reception on Saturday in Dublin, but Quinn and Given think time has altered opinion and along with Kilbane, regarding Carsley, theirs is mainly one of regret.

Carsley, Kilbane and Given were called up for Ireland by Mick McCarthy. Superficially, McCarthy, from Yorkshire, is as English as cricket, but he won 57 Ireland caps and has had two spells managing its national team. His commitment was not in question.

Given points to an English cricket figure — Eoin Morgan.

Morgan is from Dublin but has an English mother, and played for the Ireland cricket team between 2006 and 2009 before switching allegiances. He appeared in 16 Test matches for England and captained their one-day side to their first World Cup final victory in 2019.

“I don’t think that’s as much an issue now,” Given says of joint Irish and English nationality. “Look at Eoin Morgan, he was the England cricket captain for years.

“I don’t know him, but I’m sure he’s broken down barriers. Cricket is one of the most English sports and he speaks with an Irish accent. It’s less of a deal than it was… or maybe I’ve been in England too long.”

Morgan lifts the 2019 Cricket World Cup trophy (Gareth Copley-ICC/ICC via Getty Images)

Quinn agrees.

“Lee’s very well respected here. Since Declan Rice, it’s all cooled down. Football people here were hacked off when Declan and Grealish did what they did, but people’s views are modernising all the time and why on earth would Lee put at risk everything he’s been building in the UK to take a punt on an association (the FAI) that has not proven itself? He’s part of an English system that has brought on so many players.

“Don’t get me wrong, it’d be lovely to have him here.”

Kilbane, who admits his partiality, is the same. At the end of his playing career, he joined Coventry, where Carsley was stepping up from coaching the youth team to help with the senior squad. “I worked with Lee quite a bit when he was with the young pros,” Kilbane says. “He was starting to get a reputation working with these young players and I could see why.

“He’s my best mate and I’m going to have a bias, but I could see the way the young kids, the 16-19 age group, reacted to him. I was on the training field with him, I used to do the afternoon sessions. I knew, I knew, what he was going to become — a top-class coach. It’s easy for me to say this now, but I knew. I used to call him ‘Mourinho’.

“Lee was so single-minded and was gaining experience at Brentford, Birmingham, Coventry and at Premier League level (while working in Manchester City’s academy). He helped establish the EPPP (Elite Player Performance Plan), when that was coming into play. I was at Hull coaching the reserves, EPPP had just started and I was leaning on Lee, asking him a lot of questions about how to implement this structure.

“Over 15 years, he’s worked with the Premier League, worked with the FA, and obviously with clubs as well. He was part of the change in English football and in English coaching.”

Carsley oversees England Under-21s in a Euros qualifying game against Northern Ireland last year (Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)

Like others, Kilbane, Given and Quinn all nod to the summer example of Spain’s Euro 2024-winning head coach Luis de la Fuente as an illustration of the advantages of national associations promoting from within — knowledge, relationships, continuity. They just wish, in this case, it was the FAI benefitting.

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“If Lee gets the job (as England manager permanently) — and I’ve not had the conversation with him about that,” Kilbane says, “the people within the FA will know they’ve got a perfect man, one who knows the whole structure of the system that’s helped bring through 80/90 per cent of England’s current squad.

“I used to go and watch Manchester City’s youth team — Lee lived at my house in Manchester when he was a youth coach at City — and I’d go on a Saturday morning and watch. There was (Phil) Foden, (Jadon) Sancho, (current Real Madrid and Morocco forward Brahim) Diaz, one or two others. He was bringing them through. He’s worked with Pep Guardiola at City, that’s another thing. Lee’s an amazing story.”

It all goes back to Pleat and Setters in 1995 and turns another page this weekend in the visitors’ dugout at the international stadium Carsley used to call home.

“I would love to have seen him get the Irish job,” Kilbane says. “I don’t feel the FAI treated him with enough respect but it’s the way it goes, he’s now got one of the most high-profile jobs in world football. I’m happy Lee’s getting the recognition he deserves.”

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(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)