Shearer would like a shot at coaching England

London: England are embedded in Alan Shearer's past as a lion-hearted centre-forward, his present as a much-discussed BBC pundit and, he hopes, his future as a manager.

Shearer represented England on 63 occasions, striking 30 times, and dreams of influencing their fortunes again. "I still get butterflies when England are playing,'' reflected the 40-year-old. "I think about the times I was out there. I miss walking out of the tunnel, the 90 minutes and the adrenalin rush that I'll never, ever replace."

"Euro 96 was the best dressing room of my time as an England player. There was so much banter and Terry Venables helped that. I learned a lot from Terry. Before Euro 96, I hadn't scored for 13 games."

"We went to Hong Kong and on the way back, Terry said: ‘You're starting Euro 96.' That gave me such a boost in confidence. That was a great piece of man-management.''

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Shearer is badged-up, unscarred by his eight weeks' managing Newcastle United and wants the England job in the future.

"Yes. If you go into management, particularly as an Englishman, then ultimately you'd have to look at one day can I be the England manager? I aspire to be the best. Surely the best is being England manager.''

He sees Harry Redknapp following Fabio Capello. "Harry would be a great England manager. At that level, it's about knitting them into a solid group and making them go out and play in a certain system. Harry would do a great job at that."

"We qualified in spectacular style for the World Cup but it was a disaster. I kept saying on television, ‘there's something drastically wrong in the dressing room because we're not seeing the players we see in the Premier League'."

"John Terry tried to get a message out, get something out into the open, to clear the air and move forward. His motives were right: he could see big problems, that something was going to come crashing down."

"Capello should know the players and what they want. If he doesn't it's up to somebody else to have a word. If the manager didn't listen, then that's his prerogative as manager and it backfired spectacularly. I cannot remember so many poor performances."

"It would be wrong to say we didn't win the World Cup because we were isolated ... but I wouldn't have liked that. I would want to be in the middle of somewhere so I could do something, go out for a walk, a coffee. It's a long, long time to go to your room. We have to learn the lessons.''