Aidy Boothroyd: England is the impossible job? U21s is the ‘utterly impossible’ job

The FA via Getty Images

Aidy Boothroyd has branded his job as England Under-21s manager "utterly impossible" as he fights to avoid disaster at the European Championship.

The Young Lions need to beat Croatia by two clear goals on Wednesday and hope Portugal beat Switzerland in order to progress from their group after two desperate defeats so far.

Boothroyd's side have not managed a single shot on target from open play across both games in Slovenia this month.

England are now facing the prospect of failing to get out of their group at two successive European Championships at this level after also falling embarrassingly short in Italy two years ago.

However, Boothroyd's job is a complex one with the main priority being developing talent for Gareth Southgate's senior side. The squad Southgate has called up for this month's senior World Cup qualifiers is packed with players who have worked under Boothroyd at U21s level, including Mason Mount, Phil Foden and James Ward-Prowse.

"I know that the England senior men’s job has been called the impossible job, I think the England U21s job is the utterly impossible job," said Boothroyd, whose contract is up in the summer.

"The reason I say that is because the amount of players that have to be produced for the senior team and the fact that we are expected to win.

“There’s a reason why we haven’t won this for 37 years and why we haven’t progressed as much as we thought we would. Part of that is because our primary aim is to get players through to Gareth.

"We want to win as well but when different personnel come up that is usually because they’ve been moved into the seniors or they’ve lost their way with us and find a way back."

The former Watford manager has described Wednesday's game against Croatia as the biggest of his career but with successors already being linked to his position, including former Chelsea boss Frank Lampard, Boothroyd insists he is focused solely on England matters.

"That isn't my primary motivation," said Boothroyd when asked if he was out to prove people wrong. "My primary motivation is working for England. I have a really good job and I enjoy it. Other people are going to be mentioned for it. Of course they are.

“That's not my primary motivation. The motivation for me is getting the players and staff ready to go home with a good result in our back pocket to look forward to the next part of the tournament."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in