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Sam Allardyce in charge of Everton last season - he hasn't worked since. PA Wire/PA Images
Feeling left out

Sam Allardyce bemoans number of foreign coaches working in English football

‘It’s becoming more difficult to choose a career as an Englishman in your own country’.

FORMER ENGLAND MANAGER Sam Allardyce has bemoaned the number of foreign coaches and managers working in England, saying that aspiring English coaches must now look abroad for opportunities. 

Speaking to Alan Brazil on TalkSPORT, Allardyce said that the proliferation of foreign coaches in the English game is “extremely worrying” in regards to developing the English game. 

It’s bewildering the amount of top quality managers from this country who can’t get a job or interview. A lot of the Championship clubs with foreign owners appoint a foreign coach; it revolves around a first-team coach that comes from abroad, a reserve team coach that comes from abroad, and generally another four or five follow with the same nationality as that manager.

“This is extremely worrying in terms of our development of young coaches and young managers. 

“The FA spend millions trying to qualify us, but we don’t get an awful lot of say in where we get our jobs from. They are fast diminishing”. 

Allardyce went on to repeat his past assertion that the Premier League is an “international league played in England”, falsely stating that only three of its clubs have English owners. (The true number is six: Brighton, Burnley, Huddersfield, Newcastle, Spurs and West Ham. 50% of the consortium in charge of Crystal Palace, meanwhile, are English).

The veteran manager said that the best prospects for English coaches lie abroad, and hinted that his next job in management may be away from England. 

“It’s becoming more difficult to choose a career as an Englishman in your own country. For me, you have to look abroad, the way it’s going now”. 

All but one of Allardyce’s 12 managerial jobs have been based in England – the outlier is his very first job, when he took a role as player-manager with Limerick in 1991

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