Paul Ince, the first black player to captain England and widely seen as a future England manager, says it is “a sad indictment” that the Football Association are about to appoint a foreigner to the job. Ince, whose MK Dons team are top of League Two, agrees with Sir Trevor Brooking that England should always be managed by an Englishman, and insists it is an embarrassment that consultation with foreign luminaries has been central to the head-hunting process.

The old warrior, with 53 caps and a glittering club career behind him, said: “The FA are taking advice from all sorts of people, such as Michel Platini, Franz Beckenbauer and John Toshack. They don’t care about English football, so why are we talking to them? It’s a sad indictment of us as a nation that we’re talking to foreigners about this. Can’t we deal with it ourselves? How many people are they going to ask? It’s ridiculous.”

Ince, 40, claims there are two “world-class” English managers available, and advocates the reappointment of Glenn Hoddle, just ahead of Terry Venables. He argued: “They both left for reasons which had nothing to do with football at a time when England were the best they’d been for donkeys’ years, at the 1996 European Championship and 1998 World Cup, so why are we looking elsewhere?”

Ince was the midfield ‘Guv’nor’ in both those teams, and bemoans England’s subsequent decline, which he blames on the lack of on-field leaders. He said: “In that ’98 team, in France, we had five strong personalities: Tony Adams, Alan Shearer, myself, David Seaman and Teddy Sheringham. I’m talking about leaders, as well as players of real quality. Apart from possibly John Terry, there’s nobody like that now.

“Let’s get it right, we were just as good, maybe better, than this lot are today. Just because Sky TV’s coverage has made the game so big, people forget how good that team was. I will always maintain that if Becks [David Beckham] hadn’t got sent off against Argentina, we’d have gone on to win that World Cup.”

Ince was good, entertaining company, well worth the 90 minutes he was late for our appointment. Last off a wet and windy training ground, as usual, he had been delayed by a protracted one-on-one with his long-throw expert, Jude Sterling, and a chat with his latest signing, Matt Carbon, once of Derby County and West Brom. Cannily aware of the purpose of my visit, he laughed knowingly as he said: “Before you ask, I’m turning the [England] job down!”

Next time around, perhaps, but for the time being he is focused on fuelling a burgeoning managerial reputation by gaining promotion with his highflying Dons. Our last meeting had been when he was a Wolves player, so there was some catching up to do. “I was 37 when Glenn [Hoddle] left Molineux, I was ready to stop playing, and I thought I was going to get the job. The fans wanted me, but Jack Hayward [Wolves’ owner at the time] decided to go for Mick McCarthy. Then I got a call from my mate Wisey [Dennis Wise], who was manager at Swindon, saying, ‘Come and help us out’, so I went there for a month. I must have been mad. I didn’t enjoy it at all, and I don’t know why I played there.

“The standard wasn’t what I was used to, and I spent most of the games [he played only three] watching the ball fly over my head. I thought, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ and said to Wisey, ‘Listen mate, after what I’ve done in my career [with West Ham, Manchester United, Internazionale, Liverpool et al] I don’t want to be spending 90 minutes running up and down the pitch and not getting a touch of the ball’.

“Because I loved the game so much, I wanted to play as long as I could, but after a couple of matches I thought, ‘Nah, this ain’t me’.”

Retired as a player, he went on a League Managers’ Association course in Warwick, but was back in work before he had finished it. “John Barnwell [chief executive of the LMA] came to see me and said he’d had a phone call from Rob Bickerton, the chairman at Macclesfield, who wanted to talk about their job. Rob told me, ‘Listen, Paul, I want you to be our manager. You are our Plans A, B and C. If you don’t want it, we’ll have to go to Plan D’.

“There was a lot to consider. Macclesfield were rock bottom of the league, 13 points from safety, and I didn’t want to start in management with a relegation. Even though it was a situation which should have had people saying, ‘What chance did Incey have there?’, it would still have been a black mark against me if I’d been relegated in my first job. So before I made up my mind, I went to watch a couple of games. They lost 3-2 at home to Bury, but there were a couple of positive signs. Two or three players had something about them, and there was a bit of spirit there. Then they went to Bristol Rovers and were down to 10 men for a long time but held on for a 0-0 draw. That’s when I thought, ‘Yeah, there’s a spirit there that I can work with’. They needed leadership and guidance, and I knew I could provide that, so I told myself, ‘If we can nick a couple of results, we might have a chance’.”

Ince’s introduction to management was hardly the stuff of legend, Macclesfield taking two points from his first four games, but a change of method, on and off the field, eventually produced remarkable results. “It wasn’t just about tactics and formations, the players’ diet was terrible,” he said. “After training they were creeping off round the corner to McDonald’s, which is no way for footballers to behave. I stopped all that. You can’t expect professionals to perform week in, week out, if they’re treated like amateurs.”

It all came together in a first-round FA Cup replay away to Walsall 13 months ago. “They were top of our league at the time, and we went there and beat them 1-0,” Ince said. “That gave us a huge lift and we went nine games unbeaten after that.”

The run was ended in emphatic fashion when the team still next to bottom in the league pyramid came up against Chelsea in the third round of the cup. “That was a pain in the arse,” Ince said. “Chelsea was an unwelcome distraction. Everybody was talking about it for weeks beforehand, and when we got stuffed 6-1 at their place it was all people were on about for ages afterwards. It was as if it was more important than staying in the league. We had a bad spell because of that hangover, but we got back into our stride just in time. It still took us until the last game to stay up, which was disappointing, because we should have made sure earlier, but the rest, as they say, is history.”

Macclesfield’s against-the-odds survival made Ince a wanted man. “I was on holiday in Portugal when I got a call from the chairman, saying there had been an approach from MK Dons. Martin Allen had left them for Leicester, and they wanted me to replace him. I knew I couldn’t take Macclesfield any further. Getting crowds of 2,000, you’re not going to have a decent budget to improve year on year, and I had to move on.

“I’d done ever so well, keeping a team up who had been 13 points adrift, and suddenly people were talking about Paul Ince as a manager. Because of that, this had come up – a bigger club with funds and a lovely new stadium. This is the other side of the coin really. My task now is to get a team promoted. It’s expected here, but I’ve always lived with expectation, and it doesn’t bother me at all. Nothing scares me. This is the best job in the world – well, after being a footballer – and expectation is nothing.”

For the time being, at least, Ince’s modus operandi is scarcely high-tech. “I brought Ray Mathias [twice manager of Wigan] with me from Macclesfield to help out with the coaching and for his knowledge of the lower leagues,” he said. “I didn’t know the game at this level at all. On our first day together he gave me a massive file on players and I didn’t have a clue who any of them were. Ray has been a great help, without him I’d have struggled. We make a great team.” Ince’s managerial philosophy is as nononsense as his playing style used to be. He explained: “What you’ve got to understand about football is that of course there’s a place for coaching and tactical awareness but if you don’t care for your players and can’t motivate them, you’re never going to have a good, winning side. Motivation and man-management is key for me. I doa lot of one-on-ones in training, showing the players I care about them individually and want them to improve.”

So much for the Dons’ needs, what about England? “We should have qualified for Euro 2008. Of course we ahve players good enough to have got us there,” the epitome of the bulldog spirit said. “What we haven’t got are characters who will turn bad situations around through force of personality, who will stretch their teammates and have a go at them when it’s required.

“At the moment, the attitude seems to be, ‘I can’t dig him out because he’s so-and-so, or because he plays for X and he’sa big player’. We haven’t got enough leaders prepared to do that. When things go wrong for this England side, there’s nobody to pull it around. Maybe one, John Terry. He’s an old-school leader, a Tony Adams, but when he’s missing, the others are so quiet. Steven Ger-rard does it by personal example. He’s got a powerful game and he’s a fantastic player, but England need more than that.

“So many times in the past few years we’ve struggled because nobody has known what to do when things don’t go well. When things go right we’re marvellous, but what we’ve got to understand is that nowadays there’s a lot more countries as good as us, if not better.”

Good management and coaching was more important than ever. Who would he appoint next? “Glenn Hoddle,” Ince flashed back, without hesitation. “He got fired because he said something the FA found embarrassing, yet [Sven-Göran] Eriks-son was able to get away with hawking himself around clubs and still stay in the job.

“Hoddle is so meticulous in everything he does, and we had a great team spirit in ’98. Whether he could get it again with the players today I don’t know, maybe times have changed nine years on, but he’s a good English coach who knows the game here, which is what we need. He’s got everything you want from an England manager, and I can’t understand why we’re looking overseas when we’ve got the answer sitting there in front of us.

“I’d definitely give the job to an Englishman – if not Hoddle then Terry Venables. El Tel was fantastic in 1996, that was the best England team we’ve had for years. He was the best coach then, and probably still is. We’ve got two world-class managers available, both English, who both left at a time when England were so much better than they are now. So why are we looking elsewhere?”

Answers on a postcard to B Barwick, Soho Square.

Paul Ince: destined for the top

- Paul Ince’s England pedigree is impressive. In a playing career that took him to West Ham United, Manchester United, Internazionale, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Wolves, Swindon and Macclesfi eld Town he epitomised England’s fighting spirit, won 53 caps and became the fi rst black player to captain his country

- Although he played 700 games and scored 81 goals, his most sucessful spell was as a Manchester United midfi elder between 1989-95 during which time he won two Premier League titles, two FA Cups, one League Cup and the European Cup Winners’ Cup

- After retiring from playing, he joined Swindon as player-coach in August 2006, but left after two months to become player-manager of Macclesfield, then bottom of League Two. Incredibly, Ince turned things around and they avoided relegation, and in June he was named manager of MK Dons

- Ince has guided the Dons to the top of League Two and has been was linked with the posts at Norwich and Premier League Derby County

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