FA unlikely to look abroad again in search for a new director

The suspicion is that the prospective successors to Howard Wilkinson won't have to form an orderly queue around Soho Square à la Pop Stars. The position that Football Association chief executive Adam Crozier deems to be "technically, the top coaching job in the country because it is setting the standards for everyone else" rules out all but the masters of their profession.

The problem is that, by definition, the majority of those eligible to become the FA's new technical director probably would not relish the job spec anyway, given Crozier's observation that "someone who loves being out on the pitch every day, taking training, is not going to be suited to it. It's about setting up systems which encourage good coaching".

So, it is perhaps as well that the FA are in no particular rush to replace the Yorkshireman, who astonished virtually everyone in the game by receiving and accepting the Sunderland chairman Bob Murray's invitation to become the club's manager, in tandem with Steve Cotterill.

It will not be a simple task to replace a determined and resourceful character who has created waves at times – there were differences of opinion over the control of the Under-21 side, with Wilkinson taking charge himself while Kevin Keegan was senior coach but then replaced by David Platt in June 2001. But he has succeeded in building a solid foundation for the development of young players as well as revolutionising this country's coaching ethos.

It is a strictly administrative job, which can perhaps be likened to someone appointed head of a school who has to relinquish his teaching responsibilities. It is for someone who can handle internal politics, meetings and paperwork, not exchanging banter with players and attempting to refine their game.

Wilkinson accepted the switch from the dugout and training ground to the relative anonymity and drier environment of the FA's technical department as successor to the much-maligned Charles Hughes and appeared to relish it. His most prominent achievement in his five-year tenure, having been dismissed by Leeds in 1996, was establishing the Charter for Quality, which sought to match the foundations previously laid down by the French FA at their acclaimed Clairefontaine academy.

He has also overseen the development of the national football centre at Burton and the introduction of mandatory coaching qualifications.

"It has got to be someone whom the players and coaches respect," Crozier said of Wilkinson's successor last night. "If you're the person who is teaching a player how to become a coach or a coach-to-be, then I think that you've got to be technically very gifted. It would be pretty difficult to do that unless they'd done the job themselves at a high level at some stage."

A man of Roy Hodgson's background would be ideal, but the former Blackburn Rovers figurehead Roy Hodgson, who is currently managing the United Arab Emirates, gives the impression of still having something to prove as a club or national coach.

The FA may be forced to turn to a foreigner. Sven Goran Eriksson will have his input into the appointment as, no doubt, will the Under-21 coach David Platt. But with a Swede as England coach, it might be that another import could be considered a rather embarrassing reflection on the state of English coaching.

There are internal candidates who will be considered, including Les Reed, the director of technical development, who will take over from Wilkinson as caretaker, together with the technical co-ordinator Robin Russell, while the former Stockholm coach Stuart Baxter, now working for the FA, could be in contention.

Crozier said of Wilkinson, 58, the last Englishman to lead a team to the title, Leeds in 1992: "In some ways he has been underrated. He has constructed a lot of building blocks for the future. People are starting to see the benefits now. Over the next five to 10 years, people will actually see what a great job he has done in terms of the centres of excellence, the academies, the National Football Centre, the mandatory qualifications for coaches coming in, and all the youth development work that has been done."

He added: "There's still a lot of work to do. I think we need to do a lot more work with the younger age groups, between seven and 12, because most people agree that if you can catch them really early that's when they learn the basic skills. If you can get that right it will stand you in good stead in the future."