Like it or not, saggy face was not my choice for england manager

But then again I was not offered a choice, A bit like a referendum on the Europe issue.

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The Football Association showed off its prize. “It’s not in bad condition; actually, it’s pretty good. It’s not got too much body damage,” said the man in charge. That was the FA Cup. Then it polished up Roy Hodgson for his unveiling.


Welcome to English football’s world of instant savings. There was no translator whispering in the new manager’s ears as a distinctly home-grown national team leader watched all the old ghosts walk into the press conference room.


The first four questions – all legitimate – were the tight timescale for the European Championships 2012 (less than six weeks), the John Terry-Rio Ferdinand problem, the captaincy and Wayne Rooney's absence for the first two group games in Poland and Ukraine.


All these phantoms had been hanging about the building since Fabio Capello walked out. It was too soon for Hodgson to play the exorcist. He knew of the FA’s interest only on “Sunday lunchtime” when the West Brom chairman called him and said England would like a word.


Wembley was being decked out for Saturday’s FA Cup final as Hodgson, 64, faced his first inquisition. As ever, the lavish scale of English football’s £757  million mansion was apparent. Even ESPN’s “furry mascot” has his own dressing room. Liverpool, the blot on Hodgson’s landscape, will be in town on Saturday in pursuit of a cup double. But who would you rather be: Kenny Dalglish, in a house of intrigue, or Hodgson – the FA’s only candidate from a month ago?




West Brom’s manager could not answer one of the public’s most pressing questions: why is he not Harry Redknapp? To solve that mystery you would need to ask both sets of parents.

Now that England’s first manager with previous international experience has established who he is not, he will have to lay out who he is, to a group of players who expected to hear Redknapp’s more staccato sentences next time they lowered themselves on to England’s bed of nails.

The revelation that no previous appointee had managed an international side stunned the room. It seemed obvious, in retrospect, that England managers are ‘promoted’ from club football, or poached at vast expense from abroad.

Over the past 15 years alone we have greeted emotional cavaliers (Kevin Keegan), Euro-cratic opportunists (Sven-Goran Eriksson), compromise candidates (Steve McClaren) and martinets (Capello). None has crossed the Rubicon of the quarter-final stage.

The FA chairman, David Bernstein, seemed rather pleased with a “process” that settled upon a coach who “could walk into any training ground across the world and command respect” — a manager who took Fulham to seventh in the Premier League and a Europa Cup final and has “been on most of the [Uefa] technical committees during tournaments”.

Each time Hodgson’s good record was buffed there was a commensurate downgrading of Redknapp’s suitability. RH has managed three international sides and coached Inter Milan. HR has never managed outside the Home Counties. Establishing contrast between the two contenders was probably not the FA’s explicit purpose but it came across that way.

All on the headhunting panel know they spurned the “people’s choice”. The FA literature was instructive: “Having taken Switzerland to the FIFA World Cup in 1994 - their first finals competition for 28 years - Hodgson also achieved a Fifa ranking of third in the world as well as successfully qualifying the team for Euro 96. His former clubs include Inter Milan, Blackburn Rovers, Grasshoppers, FC Copenhagen, Fulham and Liverpool.

“He has also managed in Norway and Sweden. In addition, he has been a regular member of Fifa and Uefa’s technical study groups at tournaments.

“Along with his vast experience of international and European football, Hodgson is the only English manager currently working in the top flight to have won the League Managers’ Association manager of the year award.

“The new manager will take charge of England at Wembley for the first time, when the Three Lions take on Belgium on Saturday, June 2, at Wembley Stadium (kick-off 5.15pm). Tickets are available.”

Not a bad advert. And out there in the shires there was a steady softening of the reflexive hostility that greeted the news of his appointment. There was a more mature appreciation of his talents. In any other major European country he would be hired without fuss, as a technocrat, with 36 years’ experience. In England a more heady brew of yearnings surrounds the process of finding a winning team.

Hodgson mentioned 1966 a couple of times. It was part call to arms and perhaps part reminder that England remain the sick men of Europe. They continue to be bogged down in questions about armbands and personalities.

Scrutiny is another big burden. Hodgson said: “I took it at Liverpool and I’ll take it here. Inter, I would submit, wasn’t exactly too easy.”

Several factors work in his favour: unanimity among the headhunters, the ease with which West Brom let him go and his knowledge of tournament football, which has come as a shock to most of the previous incumbents.

The one surprise is that Hodgson will be less of a national father figure than the FA would have liked, concentrating his energies instead on the first XI, as Redknapp would have.

Apartheid, under whose shadow he played in the 1970s, was efficiently denounced as “an evil regime”. Hodgson has read enough Philip Roth to know about the contortions of the public sphere. That could be his first squad lecture. Or, maybe not.

 

I never gave a **** who got it tbh.

See myself as British not English.

Served in the British forces.
Have a British passport. (well I used to but aint paying 90 quid to renew)
Bow down only to the Union Flag.

Gave up caring about the England sqaud years ago.

 

A knar ya billy, both of us ex mob,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,enough said.

 

Think he's a good choice. Used to think of myself ad British but having lived in Jockland for so long with all the Anti English feeling now class myself as English and English alone I'm a belligerent bugger me.

 

If you are from Sunderland, or support sunderland, is there another kind,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,?

 

Nah got to be Belligerent to support us it's in the blood.

 

I've lived in Glesga mesel & never had any unwill or anti English shown to me tbh.

 

worked loads over the years at Dyce airport, Prestwick and Glasgow, never got anything but good news from the folk. the porridge gobblers are cool in my book. Love em.