Gary Neville slams the FA for appointing Thomas Tuchel as England manager

Gary Neville has criticised the FA's decision to .

, who made 85 England appearances as a player and was also part of Three Lions coaching staff, believes there are English coaches like and who could have got the job and that is "damaging" to accept the fact that a non-English manager like is "better".

He told : "It doesn't feel like a strategic decision it feels like an instinctive one off the back of what's happened in the last two weeks. Thomas Tuchel has been available for months, there was no need to appoint an interim if they wanted him. This to me smacks of it being a recent decision.

"I don't think Thomas Tuchel should be in any way, shape or form questioned in a difficult way this afternoon when he sits in the press conference because I think that he's a great coach, he's taken a job with a group of talented players and I think everybody in our country including myself will wish him all the best and hope we can get over the line and win a trophy, but I think there are some serious questions for the FA to answer in respect of English coaching.

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"I do think we are damaging ourselves accepting Thomas Tuchel is better, he is better than any of the other English coaches. But with the English coaches that have managed in the upper echelons of the league with Eddie Howe at and Graham Potter.

"I do think there are outstanding coaches that could have been appointed that were English." Neville went on to outline his concerns about the state of English coaching, claiming there is no "clear identity as an English nation of what we are anymore".

He explained: "Let's be really clear, as a country the we've benefited hugely from the international players and coaches that have come to our country. I think the league's the best in the at the moment because of , , Maurizio Pochettino, and all those coaches we've had in the league in the last six, seven, eight years.

"It's outstanding and I wouldn't change it for the world. It should be difficult for English coaches to get the top jobs in our country but I think that my view is at this moment in time that you know it's very difficult as an English coach and I think the England team, I mean it's really simple, there are people who just think we're England, we should have an English coach.

"I don't think of it as sort of simply as that, I think of it purely from a point of view that I've worked under international coaches for England, I loved playing for England whilst I was working under , Glenn Hoddle, Steve McLaren, Kevin Keegan and Sven-Goran Eriksson so I didn't see any difference in terms of my passion for my country when I played under an international coach but what I have seen in this last 15, 20 years is the reputational damage that English coaching has taken.

"We are in a rut when it comes to English coaching. English coaching is one of the least respected big nations in Europe when it comes to taking charge of a football team. Spanish, German, Italian coaches, Portuguese coaches are renowned for their styles of play, for their philosophy.

"We don't have a clear identity as an English nation of what we are anymore. We haven't built a style, we haven't got a coach who's built a style that's unique to us and we've seen coaches from all around Europe come and input their styles into our game and we've copied their styles and we're trying to copy what they do without really developing our own style.

"I think to me at this moment in time, my view is that we need to build an identity as an English sort of country in terms of what our style of play is and let English coaches flourish and St George's Park was set up to do that."

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