In a strange way, life at Adidas’ campus has given Eddie Howe the briefest of glimpses of life as an international manager. It was here, at this state-of-the-art training base in rural Bavaria, where the German national team were based during the Euros under Julian Nagelsmann.
Just as Nagelsmann emerged as the outstanding candidate for the DFB, as a modern manager who made his name in club football, Howe is now right at the top of the FA’s list after Gareth Southgate announced that he was stepping down. Yet the similarities end there.
Whereas Howe will travel back with his players to Tyneside at the end of an intense week of training, the reality is that Nagelsmann won’t have the chance to work with his squad again until September. These are the limits of international management that have previously put the hands-on Howe off.
There may still be five months left of the calendar year, but England play just six more games in 2024. For context, Newcastle could well have contested 14 matches in the Premier League and Carabao Cup by the time England meet Ireland in their final Nations League fixture in November – and that is without European football.
Whatever about the fixtures, though, it is the time on the training pitches that Howe loves the most when it comes to driving players to new heights. In international management, Howe would only have a handful of sessions per window.
The time in between international breaks would be filled by analysing opponents and watching players just as Howe and Tindall did in their early days at Bournemouth when they drove up and down the country to scout prospective targets either side of matches. Would that really appeal now?
“I love the day-to-day coaching,” Howe previously said in 2022. “I love being with my players on the training ground and, in international football, you get that taken away for long periods. At this moment in my life, that’s not something I want to do.”
Has that stance changed? Would Howe have a decision to make if England came calling and Newcastle granted the Three Lions permission to speak to the 46-year-old? Would the opportunity to lead this talented group of players to glory at the World Cup before a home Euros two years later be too difficult to turn down for a proud Englishman? Only Howe can truly answer that.
While Howe is unlikely to ever rule out the prospect of one day managing his country, and taking what he has called the ‘ultimate’ job, the timing of the current vacancy feels a little premature when the position could come around again in the future.
Howe, after all, still has so much to achieve in club football and there is a reason why the average age of a manager at Euro 2024 was 54. Only two bosses at the tournament were younger than Howe – Julian Nagelsmann and Domenico Tedesco – and it was rather telling that the pair were both out of work when they took jobs at Germany and Belgium respectively.
Howe is very much in work having had to fight to get his chance at a club like Newcastle and no Englishman is currently managing a side who finished in the top seven in the Premier League last season. That is how hard it is to secure a position like this at a project like this and Howe remains fiercely determined to end the club’s long wait for silverware.
There have been some significant changes at boardroom level in recent weeks, but Newcastle’s owners certainly won’t want to lose Howe and it is worth noting that the 46-year-old felt their support and understanding during some sticky moments in an injury-ravaged campaign last season. They had not forgotten how Howe led Newcastle to a top-four finish with the ninth-highest wage bill (£186.7m) in the Premier League in 2023 and just a year after the Magpies pulled clear of relegation trouble.
Hundreds of millions have been spent on players, but Howe? He’s been their most important addition.
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