There is a corridor at St George's Park lined with framed photographs of every England manager, from Walter Winterbottom onwards. Sam Allardyce is up there, and he lasted one game. Lee Carsley is not, despite winning back-to-back European Championships with the Under-21s and taking charge of the senior team for six matches after Gareth Southgate left.
He does not appear to mind much. What he is chasing instead is a third straight Under-21 title, and two results would put England within reach of it. Beat Kazakhstan at Molineux on Friday, then Slovakia next week, and qualification for Euro 2027 is secured with England already three points clear at the top of Group D.
A treble only Italy have managed
England won the tournament in 1982 and 1984, then waited 39 years. Carsley's side ended that in 2023, beating Spain in the final after a campaign played across Georgia and Romania, and defended the title last summer in Bratislava through Jonathan Rowe's goal in extra time against Germany.
Three in a row has been done once, by Italy in the 1990s, and never in the 16-team format the competition now uses. Carsley is aware of the scale of it, and is equally aware that talking about it is a good way to trip over. He describes qualifying as the priority and says the rest is something to think about later, which is the sensible answer and probably also the honest one.
He has been offered club jobs since the first title and turned them down. His reasoning is worth quoting because it is unusually plain for a coach in his position: he wants to be part of the Football Association when England finally win a major tournament, and he would rather stay inside that project than leave for the easier money. The word he used was legacy.
The record shows how thin the margins get
England have won six of their seven qualifiers and still came close to embarrassment, needing an injury-time penalty from Rico Lewis to draw 1-1 in Andorra in March. That is the sort of result that ends campaigns, and Carsley knows it.
Euro 2025 qualifying was tighter still. England took Group F by a single point, needing two late James McAtee goals to beat Ukraine in the penultimate match, then hammering Azerbaijan 7-0 while Ukraine lost at home to Serbia. Top spot arrived on the final day. Nobody remembers that now because of what followed, which is rather the point.
So he is refusing to treat Kazakhstan as a formality. His line is that England cannot turn up assuming better players will settle it, and that opponents see the back-to-back champions as a scalp worth having. The squad has to be ready for that mentally as much as physically.
The pipeline keeps proving itself
Look at where the 2023 winners ended up. Cole Palmer and Anthony Gordon were in that squad. Noni Madueke, who played at this summer's World Cup, could not get into the starting XI. James Trafford, now at Leeds, was part of it too.
The current group carries the same markers. Rico Lewis, Archie Gray at Tottenham and Jobe Bellingham at Dortmund are all names that will be familiar to anyone who follows the senior side's succession planning. England host Slovakia in Stoke on 2 October and finish Group D away to Ireland in Cork four days later.
The photograph on the St George's Park wall can wait. A third trophy would make the omission look stranger than it already does.
Fixture context: England Under-21s v Kazakhstan, Euro 2027 qualifying, Molineux, Friday 25 September. England top Group D by three points with six wins from seven. Slovakia visit Stoke on 2 October, Ireland host England in Cork on 6 October.
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