How the ‘impossible job’ changed: why managing England no longer defines football’s greatest pressure
08.04.26, 08:30 Updated 08.04.26, 20:32 4 Minute Read
Chris Eldergill
For years the media have labelled it the ‘impossible job’: too much pressure, too much history, too much noise. The phrase really took hold during the late Bobby Robson era and then, much more sharply, during Graham Taylor’s difficult spell in charge.
It became part of the national lexicon after the 1994 Channel 4 documentary, 'An Impossible Job', which showed in raw detail the pressure Taylor was under during England’s failed World Cup qualifying campaign.
Media and England fans described it as the ‘impossible job’ long before that documentary aired, such was the tabloid scrutiny around Robson’s later years.
More recently Gareth Southgate inherited that same label, though he slowly changed the thinking and must be credited with proving that the job wasn’t the poison chalice many assumed it to be. Think about that label today in comparison with the task facing a typical Premier League manager, and it no longer holds weight for the England boss.
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