The Football Association has an agreement in principle with technical director Frank Vercauteren, will he get a young national coach next to him?

The search for the two successors to Roberto Martínez as national coach and technical director of the football association is nearing its end. The football association has an agreement in principle with Frank Vercauteren (66) to start working as sports director. If the signatures are also signed, the appointment is expected to become official soon. Possibly it can be communicated together with that of the new national coach.

The Task Force of the association – consisting of CEO Peter Bossaert, board members Sven Jaecques and Pierre Locht and external advisor Bart Verhaeghe – which chooses the national coach, is still in talks with a few candidates. Earlier, the names of Joachim Löw (62), Mauricio Pochettino (51) and André Villas-Boas (45) leaked. But Löw and Villas-Boas dropped out for various reasons and Mauricio Pochettino (ex-PSG) also seems to be a (too) expensive bird for the union. This is how the Italian German Domenico Tedesco (37) comes into the picture.

With Frank Vercauteren, an experienced sports director of ‘elite football’ will work who can act as a sounding board for the possibly new and young national coach. One of the problems of Martínez’s dual role was that he was not accountable to anyone as national coach.

Who is Tedesco?

Domenico Tedesco is a university-trained engineer with a degree in innovation management and knowledge of five languages. Club teams – Nice is one of those – have already pulled his sleeve. In Tedesco’s entourage it sounds that “the interest of the Football Association could be taken as a compliment”. Our sources are formal: he is indeed shortlisted.

The Italian-born German has never played football at a high level and started at a very young age by trainer standards. Julian Nagelsmann, the current coach of Bayern Munich and previously successful with RB Leipzig, was his companion on the coaching course. Tedesco was the primus there, before Nagelsmann.

His first achievement with the seniors was in the second Bundesliga where he saved Erzgebirge Aue from relegation in 2017 at the age of 31. Impressed by that performance, Schalke 04 brought him to Gelsenkirchen. There, what happened to him often happened: starting like an express train only to fall back deeply.

In his first season at Schalke 04, he finished second in the Bundesliga, behind the unapproachable Bayern Munich. The following season it did not work and he was sent out after a 7-0 pandering in the Champions League against Manchester City. After a period at Spartak Moscow, the same thing happened to him at RB Leipzig. Tedesco did well by taking the German Cup last season. But here too it went downhill this season and he was fired in September. He has been looking for work ever since. The Belgian Football Association is therefore eligible to bring him in.