{"id":626932,"date":"2026-09-25T09:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T09:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/626932\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T09:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T09:22:08","slug":"england-under-21s-lee-carsley-looks-for-lasting-legacy-with-young-lions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/626932\/","title":{"rendered":"England Under-21s: Lee Carsley looks for lasting legacy with Young Lions"},"content":{"rendered":"

England lifted successive trophies in 1982 and 1984 but then had to wait 39 years until Carsley’s men won in Georgia and Romania in 2023, beating Spain in the final.<\/a><\/p>\n

Last summer’s extra-time victory over Germany in Bratislava<\/a> sealed their title defence, thanks to Jonathan Rowe’s strike.<\/p>\n

Winning the tournament three times in a row has only ever been done once before, by Italy in the 1990s, although never in the competition’s current guise of 16 teams.<\/p>\n

Carsley is aware of the challenge ahead – but also the lasting impact more success could have.<\/p>\n

“The older you get, you want to leave a legacy, don’t you?” He said, with England top of Group D and three points clear of Slovakia.<\/p>\n

“There would have been an easy move, after the first win, to go and do club management and go and accept a few of the offers.<\/p>\n

“But I enjoy the job I’m doing and I enjoy that I’m part of a bigger quest to win a major tournament. I want to be part of the FA when we do that.”<\/p>\n

Carsley also says he welcomes the pressure of attempting to do something no Young Lions team has done before.<\/p>\n

“I think we have to embrace that,” said the former Everton and Derby midfielder. “They come to play for the under-21s, you’re back-to-back champions. There’s a bullseye that goes with that. We have to be aware of that and go for it. <\/p>\n

“The expectancy, we’ll just get through the group and then we’ll win the quarters, we’ll win the semis and then we’ll just win the final… it’s very difficult. <\/p>\n

“My priority is definitely qualifying and then that’s something I’ll think about.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England lifted successive trophies in 1982 and 1984 but then had to wait 39 years until Carsley’s men…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-626932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}