Newcastle United manager Eddie Howe says he was not contacted by the Football Association during their recent hunt for a new England manager.
FA chief executive Mark Bullingham said they had “interviewed approximately 10 people” including “some English candidates” before appointing German former Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel.
Howe, one of only three English managers currently in the Premier League, confirmed on Friday he was not among those spoken to.
Asked if he was interviewed for the England job, he said: “I was not. There was no contact from the FA.”
Questioned on whether this bothered him, Howe said: “England have to do what is right for them and only they will know the processes they have gone through and the decisions they have made. I am certainly not the type of person that is going to analyse that.
“For me, it’s about Newcastle and trying to win games and it’s hard enough to do that if you are 100% focused, and I will always remain that way to my work. If you drop your levels, then the job becomes impossible and at no stage have I allowed myself to do that.”
The FA have declined to comment on Howe’s remarks.
Tuchel’s appointment was confirmed on Wednesday, making him the third non-Englishman to coach the Three Lions.
Howe said he would have preferred an English coach to have been given the job but was full of praise for the 51-year-old.
He shadowed Tuchel for a couple of days while the German was manager of Chelsea and said he had learned a lot from the man who guided the Blues to the Champions League title in 2021.
“I’ve got a relationship with Thomas and I was lucky enough to go and see him work at Chelsea when I was out of work,” Howe, 46, said.
“What a brilliant guy. What a great person. What a great coach. I had two days with him and thought he was fascinating, and I wish him well. I think he’s a great appointment and I hope he leads England to many trophies.”
It is not known whether Howe’s agents and representatives were spoken to by the FA regarding the England job.
On Wednesday, Bullingham told BBC Sport: “Any federation will always want to look at an appointment like this and have a really strong candidate pool of five to 10 domestic candidates who are winning trophies at both club and international level.
“We’re not in that position at the moment. We’ve got a really strong talent pipeline of young coaches. What’s important is they get the opportunities to prove their worth.”
One coach widely linked to the England job was Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola. He consistently responded “it doesn’t matter” when asked whether he was approached by the FA.
“Thomas Tuchel is the manager, forget about it,” he said. “I’m the manager of Man City, forget about it. The rest is not important.”
On whether England’s manager should be English, Guardiola said: “We don’t decide where we’re born. Mum and dad decide that and nine months later we’re here!
“I know we are proud of where we are from but the world is so big. You have to be open-minded.”
‘Howe not being sounded out is very surprising’
Tuchel’s appointment as a non-English manager of the men’s England team – following Swede Sven-Goran Eriksson and Italian Fabio Capello – has raised questions about the pathway for English managers to elite level jobs.
Howe, who guided Newcastle to a fourth-place Premier League finish in 2022-23 and Champions League qualification, had been considered by many in football to be a prime candidate for the England job following the resignation of Gareth Southgate after Euro 2024.
Former Newcastle and England striker Alan Shearer said on Wednesday he was “surprised” Howe had not been approached by the FA.
When asked if he was comfortable with Tuchel being appointed, Shearer told The Rest Is Football podcast: “If he is the outstanding candidate, yeah. But what would be a little bit of a concern is the pathway for English coaches.
“[Howe] is an outstanding manager and would have been the main English candidate for me. To know he has not even been sounded out is very surprising.”
Everton manager Sean Dyche also said he felt Howe would have been a top contender.
“He was someone who there was noise about and rightly so [but] he may look at it differently with that is going on at Newcastle,” Dyche said.
He added Howe was “someone who you can consider in that frame to be England manager”.
Wolves boss Gary O’Neil said English football only had itself to blame for the FA’s decision to go for an overseas manager, while adding he had “no issues” with Tuchel’s appointment.
“If the best man is not English, that’s on us, so next time it comes up, can the nation make the sure the best man for the job is English?” he asked.
Arsenal head coach Mikel Arteta said the country should be proud that a high-profile overseas coach like Tuchel was interested.
“I think I would take a lot of pride that a lot of managers, a lot of people, would do anything to become the England manager,” the Spaniard said.
