The FA have been warned by Harry Redknapp to stay away from appointing Pep Guardiola and instead back Thomas Tuchel going forward.
Earlier this month, reports emerged that the former Manchester City was the Football Association’s first choice to become England manager and had even reached a verbal agreement in 2024 to take the job.
However, Pep Guardiola instead stayed on at Manchester City, with the Three Lions instead opting for Thomas Tuchel instead.
In the last week, Italian Football Federation president Giovanni Malago confirmed Pep Guardiola held talks on potentially becoming the new head coach of Italy.
But Pep turned down the chance, with La Gazzetta dello Sport reporting that Pep Guardiola demanded a €20m-a-year salary, FIGC could afford only half of it, making the appointment impossible.
Guardiola has previously made it known he would be keen to take the England job if the position opens up, and that still seems to be the case.
But it seems Harry Redknapp wouldn’t be welcome this.
EXCLUSIVE: Harry Redknapp warns FA to avoid Pep Guardiola | @justinallen1976
https://t.co/yD5q4JCeBg— The Sun Football ⚽ (@TheSunFootball) July 26, 2026
Redknapp said, as per The Sun: “Everybody seems to think Pep is some sort of magic wand in football. The bloke is an absolute tactical genius, no doubt about it.
“But you can’t just teleport Pep into the England set-up and suddenly expect guaranteed trophies.
“At club level, Pep’s always had massive money to spend. If he needs a full-back who can step into midfield, he buys a £70million player.
“In international football, there are no chequebooks. You don’t have transfer windows. You get what your country produces, and that’s the end of the story.
“Italy is a proper warning sign for us. A massive footballing powerhouse missing out on back-to-back World Cups is absolute madness — criminal really.
“Yet, if we aren’t careful, we are sleepwalking straight into the exact same disaster.
“The pipeline of young local talent in Italy has dried up and it’s starting to happen here.
“Back in my day at West Ham, we had a proper production line coming through — Michael Carrick, Joe Cole, Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Glen Johnson, Jermain Defoe.
“We had players bursting into the team who lived and breathed the club, knew the culture, and went on to play for the Three Lions.
“It breaks my heart because half of these academy boys now don’t even get to watch the first team train. They’re stuck on faraway pitch behind high fences.
“At West Ham, we had the lads sweeping the terraces, staying behind after training, kicking balls against walls and watching the senior pros.
“Now everything is sanitised. You can’t build steel in kids if you insulate them from real senior football.
“There should be rules in place where Premier League clubs have to field a set number of English players. That’s how you protect our future.
“Right now, top clubs just go abroad to buy ready-made players, and our young homegrown lads get blocked at every turn.
“In an ideal world, an English national team should be led by an English manager.
“The Spain manager is Spanish. The France manager is French. The Argentina manager was Argentinian who used to play for West Ham!
“We’ve got brilliant managers like Eddie Howe who know our culture.
“Plus top former players like Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard who have cut their teeth in management.
“But it’s clear the only way English managers usually get Premier League jobs is if they get promoted from the Championship.
“If we don’t trust and back our own coaches, what message are we sending to the next generation?
“Don’t get me wrong, we’ve actually got a fantastic squad of players right now who are more than good enough to go and win a major trophy.
“So let’s forget about chasing Pep. Let’s give Tuchel our full backing for the job ahead.
“And let’s sort out our youth development before we end up like the Italians, watching the World Cup from the sofa at home.”
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Following England’s defeat to Argentina in the World Cup semi final, Redknapp spoke on GB News:
“I watched obviously like everybody watched the game and yeah, really disappointed, I thought we had a great opportunity this time around to actually win the World Cup. So a big let down.”
At half time, I’m looking at them and I’m thinking, well, they are an average team. They really had nothing to offer Argentina. And I thought if we can score, the game’s over because they really they they you know, we hadn’t created any hadn’t been a shot on target first half. But then when we scored, I thought, ‘Ok, there’s no way I can keep getting that. We’ll score again. We could win this two or 3-0.’
“And suddenly soon as we scored, it was like, ‘Hang on, we ain’t going nowhere. We’re going to next time we got five at the back.’ And they’re bringing on forwards. We bring on more and more defenders. And even so, you’re sitting there surely thinking to yourself, if they do score, how are we ever It’s one, how are we ever going to score? We ain’t going to score with this team.
“But this and we had no forwards. Surely at that stage, if we’d have gone for them when they started to push forwards on, we’d have opened them up, we’d have caught them again and we’d have scored again for sure. But no, we went into absolute defensive mode soon as we scored, never played, never got the ball. I think we had 12% possession from the time we scored to the end of the game.
“Suddenly they did look like world beaters and we looked shocked. I mean, we see subs coming on. I watched Dan Burn run on and the players are going what we doing, where we are playing where am I going, what’s happening. It was like just threw bodies on and just thought just get in your box and try to kick and head the ball away.
“Thought what are we doing, you know, I just couldn’t believe it how we suddenly took off forward players, bought on more defenders and and really had no intention of trying to to score a goal. It was just back to the wall. Hang on. Ok. Mexico, we had 10 men. We had to go five at the back and throw Dan Burn on and just be, you know, hang on for grim life.”
“We were 1-0 up against a team who hadn’t really created anything. I mean they were they look very very average you know for for the majority of the game until we went into that defensive mode when after we scored then suddenly they came forward and started to pass and play and obviously they had the best player on the pitch in Messi. Every time he got the ball the game it lit up. He he just was incredible to watch, you know, but they suddenly came to life because we invited them on and invited pressure, sat back, became really negative. It was amazing how it went.
“How many good performances did we… when did we play really well? Apart from the second half against Croatia, we did well against Mexico. We fought for our lives. When did we really look at us and think my god we have dominated we’ve played fantastic stuff, we never really we stumbled through the tournament I felt and we it was, I couldn’t come away from and say ‘oh we were the best team in the tournament we were great we could have won it’ you know I thought luck was with us and we may go on and win it but was a big letdown.”
Pep Guardiola has also spoken in an interview posted to YouTube recently…
