FA to kick-off negotiations in hunt for new supremo

THE search for the next England manager will intensify next week with Football Association chief executive Brian Barwick set to move on to the next stage of finding Steve McClaren’s successor.

By next week, Barwick will have completed his consultations with 12 leading figures in the game, and will sit down with Trevor Brooking, the FA’s director of football development, to decide on their strategy.

It is expected the pair will draw up a small but select group of managers — even perhaps just one or two names — who will be approached to sound out how interested they are in the position.

The list includes Jose Mourinho, Fabio Capello, Martin O’Neill and Jurgen Klinsmann. After that, negotiations will focus on a favoured candidate and if talks are successful, his name will be presented to the FA board for ratification. The FA are determined to avoid the sort of beauty parade that caused such widespread dissatisfaction the last time a succession of candidates were interviewed, and McClaren was clearly not first choice as England manager.

They are emphatic they will not to be bounced in to approaching leading managers such as Mourinho or Capello with a job offer simply because they are popular choices, only to be left in the lurch again as they were with Luis Felipe Scolari in 2006. Intriguingly, even managers such as O’Neill who have publicly ruled themselves out of contention may get a call to see if that really is the case. FA insiders say they would be surprised if McClaren’s successor is not installed before the next international — the friendly against Switzerland on February 6 at Wembley.