They've had English managers with little experience of overseas football and foreign managers with no experience of English football.
So in opting for Roy Hodgson, an Englishman with extensive international knowledge, as their new England manager, the Football Association are at least doing something different.
But such is English football's insularity the fact Hodgson has won league titles as a manager in Sweden and Denmark, as well as taking charge of an undeniably 'big club' in Inter Milan, is often downplayed.
Instead critics focus on his unsuccessful spells in charge of Blackburn and, more recently, Liverpool while decrying his achievements with 'small' clubs such as Fulham and current side West Brom.
But the Liverpool he encountered was not the Liverpool current Reds boss Kenny Dalglish served so ably as a player.
Instead Hodgson found himself having to restore the fortunes of the Merseysiders, last crowned English champions in 1990, against a backdrop of boardroom wrangling and with an Anfield hero in Dalglish waiting in the wings.
The situation he inherits with England is similar.
England haven't lifted a major trophy since winning the World Cup on home soil in 1966 and the FA is synonymous with behind the scenes wrangling.
And, as was the case at Liverpool, Hodgson finds himself starting a job with many people wishing it had gone to someone else.
In this case it's Harry Redknapp, the Tottenham manager and fans' favourite, who has won widespread plaudits for taking Spurs into the Champions League, with a fresh qualification for European club football's premier tournament again in the north London club's sights this term.
Redknapp is a far more media-friendly character than Hodgson, who in contrast is portrayed as the choice of the dull "suits."
Yet attempts to paint Redknapp as a latter-day Brian Clough, widely regarded as the best manager England never had and twice overlooked for the job, are wide of the mark.
Clough twice turned two relatively obscure Midlands clubs in Derby County and Nottingham Forest into champions of England and, in the case of Forest, added two European Cups as well.
Redknapp's only major piece of silverware as a manager is the 2008 FA Cup he lifted with Portsmouth.
The 64-year-old Hodgson cannot match Redknapp for 'man of the people' popularity and in having taken West Brom to 10th in the table this term was damned as 'Mr Average' by the Daily Mail.
Yet those who've played under him laud his preparation and tactics.
"He is probably the best man-manager I've ever worked with, he always made you believe in yourself," former Sweden midfielder Stefan Schwarz, a member of Hodgson's Malmo team of the 1980s, told the Daily Telegraph.
Switzerland's Ramon Vega added: "He's very good at the tactical side of the game, He won't have to teach England's players how to play but we will have to teach them how to beat the opposition. We were always well prepared."
The fact Hodgson has been appointed just six weeks from Euro 2012 gives him and the FA a ready-made excuse if England perform poorly in Poland and Ukraine.
Longer term, if Hodgson fails to deliver England a major trophy it may well be for the familiar, but still unpalatable, reason that the players just aren't good enough.
But the FA are trying to reform themselves, while the kind of national training centre commonplace the world over for decades is about to be delivered for England at St George's Park in the Midlands town of Burton.
At last the realisation is dawning that a successful England team is about much more than managerial 'messiahs', although whether they have a prayer under Hodgson remains to be seen.
Source: AFP
