HODGSON DEFYING FATHER TIME
YOU HAVE to love Roy Hodgson. Well maybe not when England were crashing to defeat against Iceland at the Euros – and perhaps through gritted teeth if you watch Crystal Palace every week – but it is hard not to hold a flame for the old owl for what he continues to achieve at his time of life. Keeping a club such as Palace in the Premier League, as it now looks all but certain he has done, on the resources Hodgson has, is no mean feat. Even more so at an age when most football managers have been pensioned off.
Talks started this week on extending Hodgson’s contract for another season which, assuming they are successfully concluded, will take him into his 74th year.
“In youth we learn, in age we understand” pointed out the 19th century Austrian writer Marie von EbnerEschenbach. As a welltravelled, well-read, multilingual individual, Hodgson probably consumed that in its original German. He may even have read it when she wrote it. Septuagenarian status seems to suit Hodgson and why not?
Age should only be a barrier when it impacts performance. Too often in sport and in society, the accumulated wisdom of years in the job is jettisoned before its time, the value of experience underplayed.
At a moment when retired doctors and nurses are being coaxed back into service to help out with the impending coronavirus onslaught, the point is well made.
The march of technology has hastened the speed of the sell-by date, defining as dinosaurs people with plenty left to give. Not knowing your app from your elbow does not mean someone does not know their subject.
Unashamedly old school in his shirt, tie and jacket, Hodgson hails from another era both tactically and sartorially in these Pep and Klopp times.
His rigid Palace side are like an old oblong Volvo compared to sleek models purring around the Premier League. They have scored the fewest goals in the league this season – 25 in 28 games. But when a club are all about survival, the most precious commodity to deal in is clean sheets and Palace have become wonderfully miserly at just the right time.
The 1-0 wins against Newcastle and Brighton lifted them to 12th and all but got the job done. No wonder Palace chairman Steve Parish fancies another season of Hodgson.
Already older than Sir Alex Ferguson was when he retired, the most venerable manager of the Premier League era will pass Alec Stock if he goes the full term next season.
Stock, who managed in five different decades, was 73 and eight months when he left Bournemouth in 1980.
It may be pushing it to expect Hodgson to match legendary Rangers manager Bill Struth, whose 34-year tenure ended in 1954, when almost 79.
But maybe he can go on still further and outlast Giovanni Trapattoni, above, who was 74 and a half when the Republic of Ireland sacked him in 2013. Or five-times Mexico manager Ignacio Trelles, nearly 75 when time was called at Puebla in 1991. Still alive at 103, Trelles could be open to a comeback.
The Premier League is a testing environment and there are limits but Hodgson, supposedly finished after Euro 2016, continues to fly the flag for the Saga generation.
A grey power salute is overdue.
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