The FA's new international performance director will ideally be English, the organisation's chairman Lord Triesman has stressed.The performance director will not be team manager Fabio Capello's boss but will be charged to bring the best practices from other countries and other sports to all of the England teams.
Triesman, who announced the new post as part of the Football Association's four-year 'vision', said: "I want the very best person we can get and my clear preference is for someone who is English, if we can find the right person who can do it.
"We need someone who understands sports performance but I feel strongly that unless that person understands football performance as well they will not be able to do the job properly.
"The performance director needs to be able to understand what it is among our competitors that makes them so successful.
"You look around the world at other countries who have done well tournament after tournament, such as Brazil, Italy and Germany and we learn to make sure we learn everything they are doing."
The four-year strategy has also given Capello the target of England making the semi-finals at the World Cup or Euro 2012, and to have the National Football Centre (NFC) at Burton up and running by 2010.
Capello said he had no problem with the targets being set him despite the side failing to qualify for this summer's European Championships.
"I think we must always be positive and my personal objective in every team I have coached was to go to the top," said Capello.
"I am not under any pressure. It's no problem for me and it's no surprise these targets have been set. I believe that it's important to have these targets and to work towards them.
"We should all be confident of this because the team I have at the moment is capable of reaching these objectives."
The FA's strategic vision also includes winning the bid for the 2018 World Cup and Wembley Stadium making a profit by 2012.
The document sets out a number of major milestones for both the men and women's national teams, grassroots football and policy objectives.
The strategic vision underlines that England are suffering a shortage of eligible players. Triesman said he could understand why FIFA president Sepp Blatter is trying to push through a plan for every team to have a maximum of five foreign players but warned that it would be a mistake to try to change EU employment law.
It understood however the FA may support FIFA's call for a 'gentleman's agreement' where the rule is abided by but not enforced.
Triesman said: "I understand exactly why Sepp Blatter and FIFA have made the proposal but to try to get European employment law changed may turn out to be too high a hurdle for anybody, at least in my lifetime.
"What I do think is that it is worth doing everything else that we can which helps bring through players who are eligible to play for England.
"We would want to ensure there are fair mechanisms so that it is not less expensive to attract a young player from continental Europe, so we don't have a trade in youngsters below the age which is appropriate."
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