FA’s men with charts are now kingmakers. Welcome to the march of the schoolteachers

My choice would be Steve Bruce. He’s done a good job and has gravitas

There was a long, slow-moving queue snaking towards an overworked Costa Coffee barista at Nice Cote D’Azur airport yesterday morning. In it, two men who would walk into the england team now: Steve McManaman and robbie Fowler. When, they were asked, did they last see an england team that knew what it was about?

The pair gave it serious thought. ‘Not hodgson,’ said McManaman. ‘Not Capello,’ added Fowler. They carried on working through. A rolodex of england coaches, some more expensive than others, some more successful, all muddling along if truth be told.

Soon we were in the last century. Like him or not, Glenn hoddle at least knew how he wanted england to play. ‘ Bloody hell,’ said Fowler. ‘We were in that team.’

More worrying is the thought they could probably have got in this team, the way england played against Iceland. For all the performance directors and management speak and slogans about england’s DNA, this was another campaign without a clue.

Iceland do not have better players than england. They just have a better team. They know what they are and where they are going.

Where are england going? What are they? A consultant’s dream, and an ad-man’s fantasy.

Two days before losing to Iceland, Martin Glenn, the FA chief executive, called roy hodgson a great england manager. Based on what?

he didn’t win a knockout game across three tournaments. he played 10 tournament games and won three. If hodgson is great, what does the FA value?

Glenn said yesterday he wanted ‘the best man or woman’ for the job. ‘More likely a man,’ he added.

So this is where england are. england’s women’s team does not even have a female coach, yet Glenn is such a tremulous box ticker, so scared of causing offence, that he has to clarify that hodgson’s successor is a position open to both sexes.

Glenn denied that the new man will be told he must be based at St George’s Park — just as well for it is a folly of a training venue built well over a hundred miles from england’s Wembley base. Yet that is where the power now resides. Office work. Sipping tea and studying charts beside other men who have never played a game of professional football in their lives. These are the new kingmakers of english football. They will decide england’s direction from here: it is the march of the schoolteachers. BeTWeeN

them Dan Ashworth (FA Director of elite Development), Dave reddin ( FA head of Team Strategy and Performance, although judging by what we’ve just seen he may now be renamed Prince of Irony) and Matt Crocker (FA head of Coach and Player Development), have not played or managed a single game of firstteam professional football. Nor has Ged roddy, Director of Youth at the Premier League.

It is hard to imagine another country that would surrender control of their national sport in this way. Then again, it is hard to imagine another country that would contemplate appointing a caretaker to take england through a year of World Cup qualification on the off- chance Arsene Wenger becomes available next summer.

Wenger has been the holy Grail for the FA for a decade now. even so, the idea of Gareth Southgate as an interim while Wenger decides is weapons-grade folly. here are the logistics: the domestic season ends on May 27 next year; the Champions League final is June 3. england are away to Scotland on June 10, the sixth fixture in a 10-game World Cup qualifying campaign in which only group winners are sure to qualify. So they could already be as good as out by the time Wenger takes the helm, if the interim appointment proves a mistake.

And what authority would Southgate have, if announced as no more than a stop-gap?

england’s first game is Slovakia away in September. Suppose that is lost? how can england spend a year without direction when they have so little as it is?

Nothing against Southgate. If the FA feel that the Premier League clubs are not giving english managers sufficient opportunities, they have no option but to develop their own, and his permanent appointment could be viewed as a positive move. Yes, he was relegated as manager of Middlesbrough, but football is volatile and few are unscathed by it.

Some 14 years before coaching Germany to the first World Cup win by a european nation in South America, Joachim Low sent Karlsruhe into division three. he then spent four months at Adanaspor in Turkey and got the bullet there as well.

So, as current favourite — Wenger fantasies notwithstanding — it isn’t Southgate’s experience of club management that counts against him, more that he is perceived as an FA man. And we’ve had an FA man since Capello was sacked, and it hasn’t gone well.

A very successful, very famous english coach recently observed the FA’s performance and development team at work. he said, to him, they all seemed like one person. Same age, same build, same way of speaking, same neat, short haircuts. Southgate was among that crew.

We caricature the blazers, ruddy faced old blokes, obsessed with the quality of the pudding course on england nights at Wembley, yet St George’s Park has a type, too — and Southgate fits in. Does he have a vision for england, how the team should play, who should play, even if the calls are unpopular; or is he just buying into the empty slogan culture of england DNA? What is this DNA anyway?

‘Who we are, how we play, the future player, how we coach and how we support,’ according to Crocker. See any evidence of that against Iceland? See any sign that england knew who they were or how they should play?

‘There is nothing more frustrating than getting to a tournament and seeing england outplayed, and then you look at the team-sheet of the opposition and it is full of players that couldn’t make it in our Premier League,’ wrote harry redknapp almost three years ago.

‘It comes down to identity. We don’t have any. The last england manager I can remember who had a firm idea of how he wanted to play was hoddle. Since then we’ve bumbled along, a hundred different systems, are we kicking it, are we passing it?’

Does Southgate change that, or is he a product of it, england’s magpie culture, copying whatever system is winning at the time? If it’s France we must build our Clairefontaine, if it’s Spain we must improve our possession statistics. Now we’ve gone to Iceland. So what now? ENGLAND

didn’t have a clue what they were supposed to be in Nice on Monday; not good enough to be technical, too divorced from traditional qualities to batter the opposition. Can Southgate walk into that dressing-room and command it. And, if not, who can?

A personal choice would be Steve Bruce. he’s done a good job at every club he’s been to, but he’s english so he doesn’t get to mix with the elite. Look at his c.v. another way, though. What is success at Birmingham City? Promotion, top half of the Premier League? Bruce did that. And at Wigan? eleventh place? Bruce did that. At hull? Promotion, survival, a first FA Cup final, a first qualification for europe, promotion again? Bruce did that, too. And he was captain of Manchester United.

Now this may be an unfashionable view, but I think the captain of Manchester United knows who can play and who can’t. I think he knows how to play, too. And I think Bruce, old school though he may be, has the gravitas to stand in a dressing room of england internationals, and make them listen. Steve Bruce would be my england manager.

But there are others and the FA must open their mind to this. Devil’s advocate, take Sam Allardyce. he has a reputation for a certain way of playing; not everybody’s cup of tea, not always pretty. But are england pretty right now?

Were Iceland pretty? No — but they knew what they were, just as Sunderland did last season, just as Allardyce teams do. Allardyce was interviewed for the england job, in 2006. he turned up with a Power-Point demonstration, and a detailed vision. The FA had no way of putting it on.

At least that will have changed. If there is one thing the architects of england DNA know how to do it is lay on a presentation.

And there do need to be interviews. Once the consultation process has ended — and how heartening to hear David Gill will be involved, considering his last hot tip for the FA was to back Michel Platini as FIFA president — get them in. Alan Pardew, Alan Shearer, eddie howe, rio Ferdinand, Glenn hoddle, hear what they have to say.

Too often in the past, the FA have set ludicrous store by being seen to get ‘their man’ — even claiming Steve McClaren was first choice when it was obvious the candidate was Luiz Felipe Scolari. They think it looks bad if they are rejected.

They shouldn’t worry. It couldn’t possibly look as bad as what unfolded on Monday night. Nothing could.