Roy Hodgson believes that the appointment of Fabio Capello as England manager has damaged the reputation of home-grown coaches and harmed the credibility of the country’s entire coaching structure.

Capello was named England manager in 2007, after the FA decided to look abroad for Steve McClaren’s replacement. In 2001, Sven-Göran Eriksson became the first foreign manager to take charge of England. Hodgson, the Fulham manager, argues that the appointments have given English coaching an image problem that helps to explain why so few Englishmen have jobs overseas.

“I think in the past there was a bigger market in lesser European countries for an English manager because England’s coaching badges were so highly regarded,” he said. “However, we have devalued the English coaching system by saying that there are no Englishmen capable of coaching the national team, that our coaching set-up is so poor that we must find someone from abroad.

“I am afraid we have devalued it for so many coaches who would have been happy to go and work in Sweden, Norway, Austria, Switzerland, Finland, Africa, Saudi Arabia and so on.”

At present there are five Englishmen managing national teams — all minor footballing nations. Holland’s population is 16.5 million, less than a third of England’s, yet six Dutch coaches are in charge of national sides. Germany have never had a foreign manager; Holland have not since 1978. England are the only top-ten nation in Fifa’s latest world rankings being managed by a foreign coach.

“The Germans and the Dutch have been much cleverer and have actually sold their coaching image in a way that we in England haven’t,” Hodgson said. “We have debased ours.

“When I was at Blackburn [1997-98] there was some talk that the German national team wanted me as coach, but that was crushed almost immediately at the top because they said it would totally devalue the German licensing system if they were to say that the German licensing system was incapable of producing a coach capable of coaching the national team. We haven’t done that in England.”

Hodgson has managed in eight countries: England, Switzerland, Italy, Finland, Norway, Denmark, the United Arab Emirates and Sweden. His success at Fulham has left him as a contender to manage a Great Britain team at the 2012 Olympic Games. He has also been touted as a possible successor to Capello as England manager.

“I think that the English coaching system and the coaches produced are actually of a very good quality and I think there should be a bigger market for them abroad,” he told Fultime magazine.

“The fact that you were FA-qualified and given a seal of approval by the top FA people, as I was, that was enough to put you at the forefront of the candidates for the job. Whether that’s still the case, I’m not so sure.” The 62-year-old turned down approaches from Sweden and Norway last month and believes the wealth and status of the Barclays Premier League help to explain why more leading managers do not move abroad.

“When you talk about the top managers who are capable of getting jobs at the highest level, for example Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger and David Moyes, I am sure they have had lots of chances to go abroad but they don’t do so because they are already working in one of the best, if not the best, league in the world,” he said.

“They are already earning more money than they are normally going to get outside the country.”