He was appointed initially on the basis that he was cheap – a stopgap while the FA found a more expensive replacement following the Telegraph investigation that resulted in the downfall of Allardyce (in which Big Sam memorably appeared to be drinking a pint of red wine). After all, it’s the lavishly salaried suits in the FA who are the real managers of the national team.ĭecent Gareth Southgate is another corporate-style manager sent straight from central casting.
When Hodgson’s team were beaten by Iceland, it occurred to me it is a grave injustice the buck always stops with the manager, and not with the fools who appointed him. The policy of embracing corporate-style managers at all costs reached its zenith in 2012 with the appointment by then FA chairman David Bernstein of the amazingly unimaginative Roy Hodgson, over the choice of the rest of the nation, which was the hugely likeable Harry Redknapp. As a result, it’s been terribly easy for opposition teams to predict and negate. With a few notable exceptions – usually when qualifying for tournaments – it’s been relentlessly charmless, risk averse and lacking in cunning. The football played by the teams these men have managed has naturally reflected their personalities. What has followed, with the exception of Sam Allardyce’s doomed appointment, has been a succession of very well remunerated corporate-style dullards – men like Sven Goran-Eriksson, Steve McLaren and Fabio Capello – each daringly more dull than the last. Putting charismatic Englishmen capable of doing something brilliant and unexpected in charge of the national team was certainly something we used to do – Sir Bobby Robson, Glenn Hoddle, Terry Venables, for example – but the practice came to a hard stop at the turn of the century with the end of Kevin Keegan’s tenure. The relentless corporatisation of the England football team over the last two decades has been an exercise in eradicating flair – that quality most hated in boardrooms because it is unquantifiable. It meant other managers couldn’t second guess him. The fact Gareth Southgate very clearly had no clue which was his best starting eleven was really a secret weapon, she said. As I sat down before kick off and began the customary cursing at the inexplicable omission once again of our best player, Jack Grealish, my wife tried to console me. It was some achievement of England's, frankly, not winning Euro 2020 given the players we had.
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