FA chief executive Mark Bullingham has confirmed that “approximately ten” candidates were interviewed to be the next England manager, with the role offered to Thomas Tuchel.

Gareth Southgate chose to step down in the wake of Euro 2024, having guided England to a second successive European Championship final but tasting defeat again.

The process to find a successor was already underway before the tournament, with Southgate coming to the end of his contract and no certainty over whether he would want to extend.

“We had a really clear recruitment plan in place before the Euros. [FA technical director] John McDermott and the team developed our ideal profile for an international coach and a shortlist if we needed it,” Bullingham explained at Tuchel’s first press conference.

“After Gareth resigned, we executed that plan, met and evaluated potential candidates. Thomas was absolutely outstanding, providing a clear vision of how we will work with our players to get the best out of them and to give us the best chance in the [2026] World Cup.”

The FA have been on the defensive due to some of the backlash about Tuchel’s appointment not so subtly crossing into xenophobia. That included specifically highlighting in the official announcement that new assistant coach Anthony Barry, who previously worked under Tuchel at Chelsea and Bayern Munich, as well as for Roberto Martinez with Belgium and Portugal, is English.

Bullingham was also pushed into revealing that “some” of the candidates interviewed were English.

“The whole process was confidential. I understand at times that may be frustrating for people but we had to make that confidential for us but also really, more importantly for the candidates. We interviewed approximately ten people, we did interview some English candidates within that,” he explained.

“We ran a really clear process, we spoke with approximately ten people throughout. Clearly some were more up for the role than others.

“We were absolutely delighted to end up with Thomas and we believe he gives us the best chance of winning the World Cup so we believe we’ve got the best candidate for the job.”

Tuchel will officially begin work in January, with yet to be confirmed fixtures in March his first in charge. Lee Carsley will lead England through their final games of 2024, facing Greece and Republic of Ireland next month in the remainder of the UEFA Nations League group phase.

If England fail to catch and overtake Greece in the current standings, the March fixtures are likely to be a Nations League promotion play-off against a third-place country from League A. Finishing top of the group would mean automatic promotion and going straight into World Cup qualifiers instead.

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