Brazil? Nuts!

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There may have been a few hangovers across the shires of England this morning, but it would be tragic if last night's FIFA World Cup 2014-qualifying win by the national side led to anyone losing their job.

Because any England fan who thought the 2-0 victory over Poland was worthy of the sort of drinking sesh that ends with a "uh...(cough)...sorry, Boss, but I won't be coming in today. Dicky stomach. Something I ate..." phone call has probably pissed away their career prospects. Literally. No sane employer would respect such poor judgement.

Yes, Stevie G carved out a pleasing individual goal, and Rooney brought a welcome return to the sort of ruthlessness his game at Old Trafford has been missing, but really - has this been a campaign to rattle the teeth of the Dutch, the Spanish, the Germans, the Italians, the Argentinians, of course the Brazilians, or even the Belgians heading for the Copacabana in strength?

So, yes. Samba time. Roo In Rio (though not Rio in Rio, ha ha). Prepare for a barrage of poor quality Brazilian-themed puns and laboured cultural references between now and kick-off next June. You will, I promise, hear jokes about bikini line waxes more than once.

Let's enjoy the build up, but not get carried away. Face facts: last night's game was a distinctly average affair, played by two distinctly average teams. England look a weaker footballing side than at any time in living memory.

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If the team Roy Hodgson has been forced to deploy in this final round of qualifiers is anything like that which he will take to Brazil next June, Glenn Hoddle's recent clairvoyance won't be in doubt.

This was a team which, in a group comprising Ukraine, Poland, Montenegro, Moldova and San Marino, was supposed to qualify comfortably. And yet even in last night's must-win fixture, it was impossible to suppress the nerves as the Dannys Welbeck and Sturridge continued to misfire, Joe Hart looked ever more a capable goalkeeper lacking confidence (or an incapable goalkeeper covering up his game with a veneer of confidence), and a defensive quarter appeared to be in the throes of suffering the classic 'three-quarters' problem - there's always one of them you've got a question mark over.

The final Group H table flatters to deceive, too. England may have ended their ten-match qualifying run unbeaten - which deserves some credit, obviously - but the won six, drawn four, lost none stats reveal a less then convincing sequence. Especially when considering the win margins of the other teams already booking their business class seats for next summer.

Clearly, no one should be in a rush to counter FA Chairman Greg Dyke's low expectations for England's fortunes next summer ("I don't think anyone realistically thinks we are going to win the World Cup in Brazil."), and Gary Lineker's doubts that there could be a quick fix.

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Hodgson has his doubters, but the FA could appoint Harry Potter and a nuclear-powered magic wand, and still there would be mass chin-scratching as to whether he had the right credentials to run the national team.

At risk of having worms scurrying in every direction from the can in which they've been happy to reside up until this point, expectations for the fortunes of the England national football team - at next year's World Cup and every subsequent competition - must be conditioned by the reality that England as a footballing nation is distinctly average.

Moreover, we're not going to get much better, all the time English players (or "qualifying" English players...) are unable to develop the skills and talent to make them not only break into our so-called elite teams, but also make England a worthy competitor on the world stage. And that's the Achilles Heel. You can go on about 30, 40, 50 years of hurt, but we're not going to see an Englishman - or a Belgian with Albanian, Kosovan, Serbian and Turkish eligability - lifting the Jules Rimet in an England shirt until the nation's footballing competitiveness is improved.

It's not just about a lack of opportunities for English players at the top English club, either. If domestic football was a barrier to national excellence, the Dutch wouldn't be the runaway European favourites they are. Ditto Belgium. To ape Father Ted, "something needs to be done about this sort of thing".

I'm looking forward to Brazil 2014 like any other right-minded football fan should be. It's in Brazil, for a start, which should make it a party like no other (and I'm not even going to grace the argument about stadium construction) and it will therefore be a treat for all watch it on television as much as those who'll be out there in person. But, unusually, considering he's a Manchester United fan and he put Roland Rat on TV, I'm with Greg Dyke on this: England in 2014? That would just be a load of Brazil nuts.

For once, it's OK

Another Monday, another round of recrimination, another sad, dejected journey home from some far-flung land, tails between legs, fresh scars from another humiliating defeat.

Yeah, yeah, and all that. It is starting to become depressingly familiar even writing such an intro, given that the origin of this very blog lay in England's miserable, wretched performance in the 2010 World Cup.

"Let the wailing and gnashing of teeth begin," were my somewhat uninspired opening words, admittedly bashed out in pique on a 7am Monday morning commuter train. England's ejection from South Africa, at the clinical feet of an organised, effective and impressive Germany (and a disorganised, ineffective and unimpressive FIFA) was just reward for the dismal way they'd limped through the group stages, weighed by their own egos, inflated expectation and by an uncommunicative manager who seemed to have turned up to run a different football team entirely.

Well not this time. Let the flags of St. George continue to fly, and may the white and red face paint remain unwashed for a few more days at least. It's OK, it really is.

England made a good fist of Euro 2012. They weren't fancied to begin with, they were never likely to win the thing anyway, but, like a progressive junior school maintaining that taking part is just as good as winning, they got involved, they looked like a team, finally, and they made their way through Group D and into another ill-fainted quarter-final. 

Had England beaten Italy - and, just like Chelsea in Munich on May 19, penalties could have ended differently - they'd have faced a Germany who are, this year, even more organised, effective and impressive. Sound familiar? Ask Roberto Di Matteo.

The press have and will continue to make remarks about penalties, "cruelty" (it's not cruel, it's just 10 men kicking a ball from a dead position and two men trying to stop it) and that England weren't 'all that' at Euro 2012. Well, that's as maybe, but at least this time they acknowledged their deficiencies from the outset, recognised their weaknesses, and got on with doing their best, and nothing more.

Moreover, national expectations were suitably recalibrated. There was no talk of a "golden generation" in the press, none of that "If we can't win with this side, then we'll never win" reverse psychology cobblers. Even invocation of 1966 was refreshingly stricken from the national conversation as it finally dawned on people that 46 years of hurt is starting to be symptomatic rather than a repetitive conspiracy. Mention of Italia'90 and Euro'96 were kept to a minimum, lest they raise hubris too high, though no-one seems to care that neither tournaments ended any better for England, with more misery at the hand of you-know-whats to the you-know-who in the you-know-when.

In 2012 there was no mention of internal rancor, splits, divisions and card schools. Even John Terry behaved himself impeccably off the field. The WAGs, too kept a respectful distance, though I'm not linking these two statements.

While the outcome of the Poland & Ukraine adventure for England may have been the same as previous expeditions, it was a different England taking part. Credit, for their composure, their "normality", their workmanlike, sleeves-rolled-up approach must go to Roy Hodgson, a manager who exudes all three of those virtues. 

For all the misgivings about the somewhat suburban manager taking over a team of uptown personalities, Hodgson's quiet, down-to-earth manner was the right one. 

"How come?" you may contest, seeing as he didn't produce any sort of material improvement on previous England results in tournaments at this level. He produced a team. From back to front, England looked and played like a unit, a "group", as Jose Mourinho would call them. 

They behaved like a team, even one that largely fell together in the weeks leading up to Euro 2012, with a manager appointed little more than a month before the competition began. All this followed a vacuum in which all sorts of devilish behaviour went on surrounding race relations and other matters. Despite it things turned out, well, OK.

Coming from a country which regards The Great Escape as a icon of national success (it ends mostly in disaster, by the way), I am putting a brave face on England's performance in and ejection from Euro 2012. Things weren't perfect, and Sunday's encounter with Italy threw a vicious spotlight on a gap (but not a "gulf" - © all newspapers) - in class with England. True, Andrea Pirlo ran a masterclass in midfield ownership, something even the most die-hard, Cross of St. George body-tattooed England fan would have to recognise.

On top of this, England did look tired at times: I know England fielded a squad of multi-millionaires, but even these pampered souls, with their Louis Vuitton toilet paper and his'n'hers matching Range Rovers, have been run into the ground by a long Premier League season. The Chelsea boys had to deal with an extra 240 minutes of Champions League football over their teammates, while the Manchester United and City players, not to mention Spurs' Scott Parker, were required to give their all right up until the final whistle of the domestic season. These may be supreme athletes, but they're also human, and it was starting to show.

So, what next? World Cup 2014. And we get to go through it all over again. 

"If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through." - General Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett, Blackadder Goes Forth

Shhhh.... Don't tell anyone, but the football's on

Incredibly, it is now Day 12 of Euro 2012, and things are hotting up nicely. I mean the football, of course, as clearly summer has decided to stay home and send autumn in its place.

Here in Paris you'd be hard pressed to know the football was even taking place. It is remarkably quiet.

At Trocadéro, down the road from where I live, there is an official UEFA 'fan zone'. This blue-tented big screen affair has generated some noise, mostly from Portuguese, Spanish and Italian expats exuberantly driving home and honking their car horns in celebration of their respective group stage victories.

The lack of local French interest is baffling, however. If this was America, it would be understandable: when the Pasadena Rosebowl near Los Angeles hosted the 1994 World Cup Final locals interviewed outside it had absolutely no idea what was going on inside it. France, though, should patently know better: they won the World Cup on home turf just four years later, a result that carried them through to winning Euro 2000 in Rotterdam two years after that.

Perhaps, then, the reason for the muted French interest in Euro 2012 lies in the fact the years since Rotterdam have been somewhat turbulent for Les Bleus. A group stage exit from Euro 2008 preceeded the abject misery of their performance in the World Cup two years ago (matched only in its depth of despair by England's dreadful run in South Africa), managing just a solitary point from their group draw with Uruguay. To compound the rancoer nationale, a nuclear mushroom cloud hung over the team following Nicolas Anelka being sent home for "comments directed against the national coach", Raymond Domenach (he of the Thunderbirds-themed visage). 

It was a split as divisive as any imaginable, like the shells of a clam prised apart by boiling water, and resulted in players indulging in the national industrial pastime for going on strike. Zut and, indeed, alors. However, there was more turbulence to come last year when it was alleged that the FFF, la Fédération Football Française, and new coach, Laurent Blanc, had discussed "informal" quotas for limiting the involvement of players from African and Middle Eastern backgrounds in the French national team.

It's not entirely clear what effect this has had on the French team, this morning sitting on top of Group D, a single goal ahead of England, but it doesn't seem to have done much to shift the indifference. Whereas suburban English homes are currently draped in Union Flags and German cars race through Berlin, Hamburg and Munich trailing pennants of black, gold and red, France appears to be hoisting one giant Gallic shrug to the whole affair.

Should France progress tonight, some of the spirit that memorably spilled out onto the streets of Paris in 1998 will return, but it is unlikely to dislodge the current national preoccupation in the country's tabacs, the oh-so-French bust-up between the women in newly installed president Francois Hollande's life (his current partner, the agreeable Paris Match hackette Valérie Trierweiler, and Ségolène Royal, the mother of his children and a defeated candidate in this weekend's senatorial elections).

Anyway, back to the footy. Tonight's matches between England and Ukraine and Sweden and France will bring Euro 2012's group stage to a close. Sweden, Russia, Croatia, Ireland and the Netherlands are already heading home. Poland are already home, which is handy. 


Of the early departees, the Dutch have been by far the greatest disappointment. Runners-up to World Champions Spain in South Africa, much was expected this time. Instead we saw their fractious spirit raise its implosive self yet again, with blame, egos and genetic impatience rearing up in the wake of defeat to Denmark, and then again defeat to that always contentious opponent Germany.

Installing Rafael van der Vaart and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar for the final Group B game against Portugal appeared to be a brave attempt by Bert van Marwijk at restoring dynamism to a limp side, whose hopes had rested on Robin van Persie's otherwise good season with Arsenal. The change came at the cost of dropping van Marwijk's son-in-law, the red card waiting to happen that is Marc van Bommel, whose family connection was never going to be a pacifying ingredient in the boiling soup of orange-clad egos.


Van Marwijk's decision to play van der Vaart looked to have worked when the Tottenham midfielder  latched on to Arjen Robben's pass in the 11th minute and looped in one of the best goals of the tournament so far. But the Oranje had forgotten about the preening, narcissist that is Cristiano Ronaldo.

Real Madrid's most prodigious proponent of hair product may well be one of the most annoying ponces to have ever graced the beautiful game, but you can never fault his ability on the ball. And with the Dutch defence looking like they were still enjoying a Sunday morning lie-in at nine in the evening, Ronaldo went through them like a comb through over-gelled hair. Or a monster ego through a sea of them.

After the match van der Vaart commented: "We all have to take a good, long look in the mirror," something Ronaldo presumably wouldn't have any difficulty with. Arjen Robben reflected equally painfully: "Of course there were some internal issues, but we'll keep them indoors." Well, partly: "The hunger in the team is there, but we failed together" he added through gritted teeth before heading home to a dejected nation packing its orange T-shirts, face paint and flagons of Heineken and chilled rosé away until the next time this nation gets behind its national football team in such vibrant enthusiasm.

Media wags have noted that the teams from countries floundering economically in Europe - Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal - are enjoying Euro 2012 the most. I'm not quite sure what that says about England. Expectations have been lowered this time around. English hubris has been shattered too many times in the past; too often we've been informed of a "golden generation" of players, a media invention that has served to hype things up to unsustainable levels.

This time around there has been a more muted build up to England's appearance. Perhaps its just a sign of these austere times, maybe it's just me being on the other side of the English Channel and surrounded by local disinterest, or maybe it's that the jury is refusing to deliberate on Roy Hodgson - but there is a distinct lack of fervour surrounding the English.

As with France, the spectre of South Africa hangs around England like a foul odour. Even now, mention of Algeria in any English pub will launch a tirade. The English have politely given Hodgson benefit of the doubt, and without the white heat of attention that usually piles up on hapless England managers, Hodgson has been quietly getting on with his job. One of his undoubted strengths.

Handicapped by pre-tournament injuries to Lampard and Cahill, batting them away over the suggestion that excluding Rio Ferdinand had more to do with non-footballing matters than footballing matters, Hodgson has demonstrated great tactical nous in England's two games so far.

While the amazing win over Sweden could have gone horribly the other way, Hodgson got the best out of a side that has had the confidence it lacked (or lost) in South Africa restored. For now, there seems to be a restfulness about England, a welcome absence of silos, of factions, of fissures of the kind that split the Netherlands apart. Against Sweden, England looked like a team, played like a team and won like a team.

Let's hope it lasts. Of course, in a tournament like this, getting into the knockout stages means you're always 90 minutes away from the next plane home. England, tonight in the Donbass Arena in Donetsk will want to win and win well to avoid meeting Spain in a quarter-final. They only need a point, but three is what we want.

Wayne Rooney's return from suspension comes with mixed feelings. Andy Carroll did such a good job against Sweden - with one of the finest headed goals I've ever seen - you almost feel compelled to give him a shot at starting tonight. Rooney's availability, however, changes everything. He may be potty mouthed, he may have anger management issues, he may have an unnaturally full head of hair again, but he is, from the first whistle, a handful for defenders. Carroll will probably score, but Rooney is more likely to, especially after being caged up, metaphorically speaking, over England's opening two games.

Either way, it will be no easy game tonight. That is, I know, a footballing cliché of the most heinous kind, but what else can you say about England taking on the one remaining co-host, Ukraine, who have much to fire them up, and not just the fact the tournament is partly taking place on their home soil. There is, according to the Ukraine team doctor, a "50-50 chance" that Andrei Shevchenko might not play - no bad thing, you may have said during his Chelsea years - but with the national captain back to outrageously good form, his absence may prove telling. Unless the cheeky Ukraine scamps are pulling a fast one...

The real mystery for me, however, is what happens if, as expected, France go through. Paris has hardly made a peep yet about Euro 2012 - will progress tonight uncork the noise?

In praise of The Quiet Man

“Do not underestimate the determination of the quiet man,” is the oft-quoted protestation of former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith who, during his time running the blue faction of British politics, rarely demonstrated any form of impactful oratorial qualities, and was ritually "shushed" ironically by Opposition MPs whenever he stood at the dispatch box.

With an acronymic name like IDS he didn't stand a chance. It sounds too much like "IBS" to survive in an environment of formerly playground-bullied bed-wetters like the House of Commons. Not that Ed Balls exactly comes off any better in the realm of tauntably-named politicians.

Anyway, I have no interest at all in former Tory leaders but, instead, today, I concern myself with the fortunes of Roy Hodgson, the softly-spoken Croydon lad who took the silent route to seniority in his football management career by pursuing that unlikely of English sporting paths - moving abroad. And he has now been unveiled as the next England manager.

When Woy, sorry, Roy, pitched up at the newly-minted Blackburn Wo...er...Rovers in 1997 he had already managed four Swedish clubs - Halmstad, Oddevold, Örebro and Malmö - along with Swiss outfit Neuchâtel and the Swiss national side itself. Not to mention a little club in Italy by the name of Internazionale.

Only Kate Moss has since eclipsed Hodgson in making good of a Croydon upbringing on the global stage. Actually, Hodgson may have reclaimed that crown by the time he accepted Mohammed Al Fayed's pieces of silver in 2007 to manage Fulham, having added a second spell at Inter, the Zurich club Grasshopper, FC Copenhagen, Udinese, the United Arab Emirates,Viking in Norway and the Finnish national team to his CV. And since then a sorry spell at a politically fractious Liverpool and, until the end of this season, a solid but unspectacular stint at the Hawthorns running West Bromwich Albion.

On paper, this collective expertise makes him an obvious choice for the vacant England manager's position. So why is it that, until Sunday evening when the FA took the unprecedented step of pre-announcing Hodgson as the only candidate to be interviewed for the job, the nation had collectively installed Harry Redknapp in the role - almost as soon as Fabio Capello flounced out of the Wembley in a huff over John Terry's sacking?

Indeed, it wouldn't be unfair to say that news on Sunday evening of Hodgson being invited in to meet the FA's four-man selection panel - David Bernstein, Alex Horne, Sir Trevor Brooking and Adrian Bevington - came as a surprise to Hodgson himself.

Hodgson is in stark contrast to "Flash" Harry, whose wheeler-dealer history and bright orange wife has made him as much a character form Minder as one of the most prolific club managers in England. And yet, we all thought the England job was his.

Even his February residency at Southwark Crown Court on tax evasion charges didn't swerve our opinion that he was a shoe-in at the end of the season to take over England and take them into Euro 2012 in Ukraine and Poland. In fact it may even have, in our twisted football-supporter logic, galvanised our view that he'd be ideal. This is the same twisted logic that regarded the Krays as folk heroes, not that I'm lumping Redknapp in the same company, but you know what I mean - we love a lovable rogue.

By all accounts, it didn't necessarily swerve the FA, either. So why did they, all of a sudden, go exclusively for a manager who'd hitherto been mentioned as a "possible" also-ran in the betting, along with Newcastle's Alan Pardew, Glen Hoddle (again), Jose Mourinho (no chance) and current caretaker Stuart Pearce?

Redknapp's fiscal challenges and residual reputational issues may have warded off the Football Association. If there is one thing we know about the FA, they are as adept at avoiding scandal as a Parisian is at dodging street-strewn dog poo. Just ask Glenn Hoddle and his, erm, beliefs.

Then there is talk that Redknapp had a very different view to the FA's longer-term vision. What, then, makes Hodgson more appropriate? He has held 19 managerial positions - some barely a single season long - and not in that time picked up any silverware. Granted, he took the Swiss national side to Number 3 in the world rankings, and he has demonstrated an ability to man-manage average-looking sides to mid-table mediocrity. That's no criticism. The facts speak for themselves.

Hodgson may be no more than a middle-management civil servant being given his chance - at 64 - to step up to run the one department not on his CV. His journeyman resumé suggests average managerial talent, and his reputation for a somewhat old-fashioned - some might even say stale - style of training does not necessarily indicate a new broom about to breathe new life into England's jaded, over-pampered, overpaid superstars, whose hubris has been repeatedly lanced by excess expectation turning to disappointment.

However: "He is probably the best man-manager I worked with," former Swedish international Stefan Schwarz told the Daily Telegraph. "He had the knack of knowing when to give a player a kick up the backside and when to build them up." To that, Schwarz cites Hodgson's skills in dealing with problems  and, countering rumblings from one or two of Liverpool's malcontnents, a professional approach on the training pitch. Swiss international Ramon Vega echoed this sentiment, who claims Hodgson has a good tactical approach. We shall see.

Hodgson will have to win over the current crop of England stars. Today's Sun helpfully noted that, with Twitter the unofficial channel of record for just about every professional footballer these days, there was absolutely no reaction at all when news emerged from Wembley on Sunday that Hodgson was to be interviewed. In contrast, when Capello quit, England players couldn't wait to install Redknapp (“Harry Redknapp would be my choice by a distance,” tweeted Rio Ferdinand while Wayne Rooney posted: “Gutted Capello has quit. Got to be English to replace him. Harry Redknapp for me.”).

Perhaps Hodgson is ideal for England. For too long we have regarded ourselves as world champions-in waiting, whereas in reality anyone else around the world sees England as anything but. We may well have invented the modern game, but in the almost 46 years since we last won a trophy, our footballing prowess has been determined more by the wheelbarrows of cash being lugged around the Premier League rather than any on-pitch ability with which we could be truly compared to the likes of Spain, Brazil, the Dutch, Italy or even the United States.

Bringing in an experienced but unspectacular manager like Hogdson, with his subtle urbanity and suburban newsagent's demeanour, may be the best decision the FA could make. We're not going to win anything anytime soon, so we might as well bring in a manager who'll ensure we won't lose too badly either.

This is the key to judging England. I was recently admonished by a Dutchman of some considerable wisdom who said: "You English think too highly of yourselves, and that's why you'll never win anything. You go into every tournament thinking you are supposed to win it, when in reality there are better sides, like Spain. They win without expectation, England lose because of it." Well, true. What was it that gave us the right to believe we were the best in the world? 1966? The Premier League?

The England job, we all know, is football's most tainted poisoned chalice. Your time in the job is spent like James Bond in Live And Let Die, stepping stone-leaping across the open mouths of snapping media alligators. No one is safe, no one is immune. Even Stuart Pearce has suffered all the usual slings and arrows and he's only been in temporary charge. Will Hodgson be able to handle this any better? Redknapp certainly would have done. During his lengthy tenure of West Ham and time in charge of Portsmouth, Southampton and Spurs he has been able to deftly balance egos and modest budgets, giving him at least one vital skill for managing England.

However, since Redknapp was first pre-installed as England boss by the unofficial selection committee on Twitter the wheels have started to loosen at Tottenham. The suggestion is that the England job turned Redknapp's head and, in the process his focus. Today, even with Spurs still, in theory, in with a shout of Champions League football next season, you could hardly say that the north London club is poised to challenge the Manchesters for the top spot any time soon.

And given that Redknapp's trophy cabinet isn't any more full than Hodgson, is he really - today at least - any better a candidate for the job than Hodgson? Harry Redknapp might be a more colourful character, but this may be the time for the Quiet Man to step in and take over an impossible job.

Stop press: Owls that look like Roy Hodgson - here!