Turn on the telly, lie back and think of England the way it used to be. It isn’t difficult. Not with David James, Phil Neville, Jamie Carragher, Martin Keown and Lee Dixon sharing their expertise and defensive acumen. Or maybe there’s the midfield craft of Steve McManaman, Paul Scholes, Owen Hargreaves and Jamie Redknapp. Or the striking instincts of Alan Shearer and Michael Owen. That’s a decent international team right there, boasting more than 500 caps and more than a hundred goals, even without Match of the Day host Gary Lineker. Or Gary Neville, one of a few England internationals from his generation involved in coaching, when his Sky TV duties allow. Holland beat England 2-0 in 1993 and almost all of the Dutch side are in coaching but not one player from England is in management... HOLLAND . De Goey: Now works with goalkeepers at Dutch amateur side DHC Delft . De Wolf: Ex-boss at Zwart, Halsteren, SVVSMC, Haaglandia, Turkiyemspor, Voorschoten 97, WKE & Sliedrecht, recently retired as assistant at Sparta Rotterdam and now working on TV . R Koeman: Southampton manager . Minutes after escaping a red card for pulling down David Platt, Ronald Koeman fired a free kick past David Seaman . F de Boer: Ajax manager . Rijkaard: Ex-Barcelona manager now retired . Wouters: Ex-manager of Ajax & Utrecht, also coached at Rangers & PSV, now head of youth development at Kasimpasa in Turkey . E Koeman: Southampton assistant, also ex-manager of Waalwijk, Feyenoord, Hungary, Utrecht & PSV . Bergkamp: Ajax assistant . Overmars: Ajax director of football . R de Boer: Was Ajax U18 & U19 assistant, but chose TV when urged by Ajax to make a career choice . Roy: Ajax B – U16 & U17 coach . Subs: . Winter: Netherlands U19 coach . Van Gobbel: Coaching 8-10-year-olds at Feyenoord . Paul Merson is tackled as he challenges for the ball (left) as Alan Shearer loses out to Frank de Boer (right) ENGLAND . Seaman: Occasionally helps Arsenal coach their goalkeepers . Parker: Ex-manager of Chelmsford and Welling, last seen blogging for Yahoo . Dorigo: Various media . Ince: Ex-manager of Macclesfield, MK Dons, Blackburn, Notts County and Blackpool . Pallister: Works in the media . Adams: Ex-manager of Wycombe, Portsmouth and Gabala in Azerbaijan . Platt: Ex-manager of Sampdoria, Nottingham Forest, England U21s and assistant at Man City . Palmer: Coaching at an independent school in China . Shearer: Eight games as Newcastle’s caretaker manager in 2009, now BBC pundit . Merson: Less than two years as Walsall manager, now Sky TV pundit . Paul Merson challenged by John De Wolf as England crashed to defeat in the vital qualifying match . Sharpe: Abu Dhabi sports pundit . Subs: . Sinton: Ex-manager of Fleet Town and Telford United . Wright: BBC broadcaster . Ian Wright  is dejected after England's hopes of reaching the World Cup in 1994 . Many former England stars have opted for the sofa. Who can blame them? Coaching is a vocation, an all-consuming passion; not something to dabble at in the hope of discovering you possess a magical gift. Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho and Sir Alex Ferguson have devoted their lives to it. Many top players from the previous generation were chewed up and spat out having been through the usual routine: use your name to get a job, discover it’s damn hard and totally different to being a player and either get disillusioned or sacked or both. Soon the name doesn’t open doors because you’re no longer a star footballer but a failed manager. In the Championship, managers survive an average of eight months, not even long enough to complete the UEFA Pro Licence course, the top qualification which is required to coach in the top two tiers of English football. Gary Neville is one of a few former England internationals involved in coaching after stopping playing . Jamie Redknapp (left) and Jamie Carragher right) chose to work as pundits upon ending their playing days . Southampton boss Ronald Koeman is one of a number of  Dutch professionals who have gone on to coach . It is a staggering statistic but out of the 92 Football League managers, only four have played for England and they have just 25 caps between them. They are Sheffield United’s Nigel Clough (14 caps), Huddersfield’s Chris Powell (5), Aston Villa’s Tim Sherwood (3) and Carlisle’s Keith Curle (3). Here lies the mangled logic at the heart of the problem. In the spirit of the football culture in this country, many good players are impatient, convinced they should bypass the qualification process. They would rather learn on the job but the job is too insecure on which to learn. Time in charge is diminishing, as is the likelihood of a second chance. Little wonder English coaching has become a punchbag for the failing national team, although English coaches actually do nothing much different to their foreign counterparts. Did we not like it when Holland beat England in Rotterdam in October 1993? Look back on the teams and none of Graham Taylor’s players are working full-time in football, although most have tried and some may return. Paul Ince managed for 238 games. Almost all the Dutch side are locked into the game at different levels. Six of them have the Pro Licence, compared with three of the English. Frank de Boer is coach of Ajax and has won the Dutch league four times in as many seasons . Danny Blind (left) is part of Holland's coaching setup and is earmarked to succeed Guus Hiddink (centre) Former Arsenal winger Marc Overmars (right) is now the director of football at Ajax . Ronald Koeman is at Southampton and coveted by Barcelona, Frank de Boer is at Ajax, where Marc Overmars and Dennis Bergkamp are in senior roles. Ronald de Boer was involved in the Ajax youth set-up until the club ordered him to choose between his coaching and broadcasting. He chose TV, surprisingly. Move on to the Euro 96 meeting between the nations and the Dutch team includes PSV Eindhoven boss Phillip Cocu and Danny Blind, earmarked to succeed Guus Hiddink as Holland coach. With Giovanni van Bronckhorst stepping up to become Feyenoord boss next season, it means Holland’s ‘Big Three’ clubs will be led by legends with more than 300 caps between them. There is nothing comparable in this country. Scour 92 clubs and you can find 25 England caps, property of Tim Sherwood (3), Keith Curle (3), Chris Powell (5) and Nigel Clough (14). There is a better show from some of the other Home Nations. In Terry Venables’ Euro 96 team which beat Holland 4-1, there was Gareth Southgate, now England U21 manager, protected in the confines of the FA bubble where Stuart Pearce spent much of his coaching career and where Gary Neville is learning. There was Teddy Sheringham, part-time at West Ham, and also in the squad were Les Ferdinand, QPR’s director of football, and Steve Stone, coach at Newcastle. Nothing proves elite players make the best coaches. The opposite could be true to some extent when you look at Ferguson, Wenger or Mourinho. But international players can make fine coaches as Sir Alf Ramsey, Sir Bobby Robson, Don Howe and Venables proved. Some who have devoted much time to this subject conclude that the trend is rooted in the British culture, where academic teaching has always held sway over sporting education and where youth coaching is not treated as a career in itself — unlike in parts of Europe and the Americas. Huddersfield manager Chris Powell is one of four former England internationals in the Football League . Aston Villa boss Tim Sherwood played three times for England but now manages in the Premier League . The opening of St George's Park has boosted the facilities on hand to the England national team . Why would millionaire footballers trade their comfortable lives to start at the bottom of a profession struggling for identity? This friction has lingered since the days of Sir Walter Winterbottom, who met resistance from traditionalists running clubs and the FA when he tried to modernise the England team to keep pace with countries such as Hungary and Italy in the ’50s. Barriers have been removed. The opening of St George’s Park and recent changes to coach education at the FA represent a big step forward according to many, but some views are deeply engrained. Winterbottom once asked Robson, one of his England players, what he might do when he finished playing. ‘I don’t know,’ replied Robson. ‘I don’t think cleaning windows is an option.’ Nor was a job on Sky Sports, so Winterbottom persuaded Robson to attend one of his coaching courses. Imagine Sven Goran Eriksson asking David Beckham the same question. ‘I’m going to help banish child poverty, model underpants and buy a franchise for a soccer team in Florida, Sven.’ How do the Dutch get their players into the coaching system? And how do they stay there when so many of the English slide out? Is it because England is a nation which prefers coaches to have come through the system? Quite the opposite, really. The obsession with rushing big-name players into high-profile jobs was more probably part of the problem. They weren’t ready for it, since they had no coaching experience, and have fallen out of the system, no doubt bruised by those who sit in judgment and brand them coaching failures. Swansea manager Garry Monk is the top-ranked English manager, his team eighth in the Premier League . Northern Irishman Brendan Rodgers, the Liverpool manager, is the highest ranked British coach in fifth . Meanwhile, there are brilliant coaches who have spent their lives in the lower leagues, a welcoming hand never reaching out to them from the Premier League. Many of the ’93 Holland team went through the Ajax gateway to a coaching career, a club with a reputation for producing elite talent. They were not thrown in at Wycombe like Tony Adams or at Stockport like Carlton Palmer. Holland is a hot-house football environment. Fewer professional teams mean it has a more concentrated focus of talent in competition. There is a greater tactical education and a desire to exchange ideas, all of which works for both young players and young coaches. Swansea’s Garry Monk is the top-ranked English manager in this country whose team are eighth in the Premier League. Of nine English managers in the top flight, five are in the bottom six fighting to prove their worth as the foreign coaches contest the title with Brendan Rodgers, the top-ranked Brit offering hope in fifth. Mauricio Pochettino has already managed Southampton and Tottenham at the age of 43 . Burnley manager Sean Dyche (left) and Bournemouth boss Eddie Howe are both highly rated British coaches . Should anyone slip, there is a ready supply of experienced and fully qualified foreign coaches, often ex-internationals, waiting to step in. Ambitious coaches such as Koeman and Mauricio Pochettino regularly jump ahead of promising homespun talent such as Sean Dyche and Eddie Howe. England, meanwhile, are in danger of surrendering an entire generation of international footballers to an array of media opportunities.
In 1993, Holland beat England 2-0 in a World Cup qualifier . Many of the England internationals from that night are now working in punditry . On the Holland side however, most players are now working in coaching . Only four former England players are now managing across the top four leagues .