Picking national team coaches

Question for discussion... over the years when I've taken on national team duties, I've picked coaches with some care, although I will often show more bias towards nationalities of the team I'm managing.

The question is, other than picking for scouting attributes (current/potential ability), and taking special care with the assistant if you want to lean on his advice, does it make any difference at all? For a club team, you're after training ratings perhaps before anything else, but training isn't really a factor in the international game, since you only have the players for a few days out of the year.

How do others pick their coaches?

I never worry too much about coaches on the national level. Players aren't with the National team long enough to benefit from coaching (my opinion). If I take charge of a National team, I usually bring along my Assistant Coach from my club team to help out, especially if he has a high tactical knowledge rating. I do however make sure that I have 3-4 top notch Physios on payroll, very useful to help avoid injuries during training, especially during a tournament. At the Club level, my rule of thumb is 1 Physio for ever 8 players on payroll, from First team to Youth team. As for the players ability/potential ratings, I usually have my scouts from my club team, scout out the National Pool of the Country I manage so I have a pretty good idea of the players I have on hand. So overall, I don't pay too much attention to my National coaches, I just make sure that they're not pure crap. Peace out!

perhaps slightly unrelated however, im sunderland manager undergoing a succsesfull pre season... when out of knowere new england manager Stewart Pearce offers me the U21 job, can you do both? and if so whats it like

Sure, technically it's possible to do both. You job is just selection and match tactics, and playing the games; I've never done a U21 so don't know if you have the same facility to ask another staff member to "prepare match reports", which is their equivalent of scouting, or you can ask your own Sunderland scouts to scout the possible players.