Lee Carsley says he has never sung a national anthem as Republic of Ireland player or England coach and seems set to stick with that stance as the countries meet in his first match as interim boss.
Saturday’s Nations League opener marks the start of a new era for both teams, with Heimir Hallgrimsson taking charge of the hosts for the first time against a side starting life without Gareth Southgate.
England’s long-serving manager stepped down shortly after July’s Euro 2024 final defeat to Spain and Carsley was handed the reins on a temporary basis as the Football Association weighs up its options.
The 50-year-old says the Dublin clash will be a “proud moment for myself and my family”, but singing ‘God Save the King’ looks out of the question for a player that represented Ireland 40 times as player.
“This is something that I always struggled with when I was playing for Ireland,” Birmingham-born Carsley said of anthems.
“The gap between your warm-up, your coming on to the pitch and the delay with the anthems. So it’s something that I have never done.
“I was always really focused on the game and my first actions of the game. I really found that in that period I was wary about my mind wandering off.
“I was really focused on the football and I have taken that in to coaching.
“We had the national anthem with the Under-21s also and I am in a zone at that point.
“I am thinking about how the opposition are going to set up and our first actions within the game.
“I fully respect both anthems and understand how much they mean to both countries. It’s something I am really respectful of.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here