THE FARCE OF THE FA
THE Football Association should have a new england manager in place by the end of next week. They won’t, but they should. With a field this small, how long does it take? A few voices need to be canvassed. A few interviews need to be arranged. And then, one meeting to reach a decision, make an offer and announce the successor to Roy hodgson.
We already know the FA are the highest payers in international football, so there won’t be too many contract issues. And one presumes any manager who takes the interview also wants the job.
This really isn’t as complicated as the Football Association makes it seem. Nothing is. Yet already, July 22 — nearly three weeks away — has been set as the date the three-man committee will report back at the FA’s summer meeting. Not necessarily with a name, mind you. Merely an update on progress.
And all the while the September 4 reckoning in Slovakia draws closer. The last england manager couldn’t beat them when it mattered with a four-year lead-in. Why should the next one end up rushing to get his thoughts in order?
Still, this is all part of the March of the Schoolteachers, so get used to it. The FA have found ways of complicating every facet of their business strategy from elite performance to media management. They will take counsel on football matters from the worlds of academia, cycling, ping pong and the Under-15s at exeter City, but can’t work out that Sam Allardyce may be able to organise a team unless Sir Alex Ferguson tells them so.
July 22? What are they doing until then? england lost to Iceland on June 27. The inquest should have started in the hotel bar at the final whistle last Monday and been over by the following weekend. Anyone who can’t be tracked down in six days has forfeited the right to contribute anyway.
Yet Dan Ashworth, the FA’s technical director, and Martin Glenn, the chief executive, met third wheel David Gill for their first formal discussion on Friday. Again, why so long?
Glenn made it plain there will be a consultation process within football, but that is only a matter of hitting the phones. If David Dein is such a powerbroker, he can find out in one conversation whether his friend Arsene Wenger wishes to be considered, if he doesn’t know already.
Gill can mine Ferguson’s thoughts just as easily. As for england’s senior players, who are believed to seek input, all will have contact numbers at the FA and should already have used them to become part of the conversation. Nobody should have to chase down a distant figure on a jet ski in Ibiza to discover his thoughts.
Then there are the ex-professionals whose views are valued, most of them on the telly. If Ashworth needed to make up a fourball at Morfontaine this afternoon he’d find them easily enough, so getting through sharpish really shouldn’t be a problem. And we’re done.
A sense of urgency is required here. This isn’t an industry appointment with an employee working his notice. hodgson is gone. A major deadline is looming. People need to get cracking. WE HAVEN’T time for another major inquiry into the ills of english football and, anyway, it isn’t necessary. The success of Wales has exposed a lot of the red herrings that pass as mitigations for english failure.
england’s footballers arrive tired because there is no winter break, do they? Well how is it that Wales, with only Gareth Bale putting his feet up in January, are still bouncing off the walls as we enter July?
The academy system is failing england’s footballers, is it, making them soft and pampered? So why is it not failing the Welsh?
A look at Chris Coleman’s squad shows the influence of Cardiff and Swansea, obviously, but also the debt owed to Southampton (Bale), Manchester United ( James Chester), Crystal Palace (Jonny Williams), Wolverhampton Wanderers (Wayne hennessey). In other words, the same academies that are supposedly failing to produce grownups for the FA. Nor does it seem that a stellar management c.v. is the answer. A lot of those now sneering at men such as Steve Bruce, for not winning the Champions League at hull, would have had exactly the same contempt for Coleman, who led Fulham to ninth, 13th and 12th-placed finishes, and left them in 15th and fighting relegation; and who did not finish higher than 17th in the Championship in his two full seasons at Coventry. Coleman is proving that there must be other ways of assessing British managers — certainly those who start each season in a fight for survival. What is plain, however, is that the FA failed in its first duty as the executive management of english football by not having a contingency plan. Forget the calamity of losing to Iceland — suppose hodgson had simply tired of the job or his circumstances had changed? Ferguson retired at Manchester United because his wife’s sister died and he wanted to spend more time at home. every business should know its next move if the top man steps down. Yet the FA were utterly unprepared for hodgson’s resignation. That is why Jurgen Klinsmann emerged so quickly as a front-runner. he was a crowdpleaser in english football, is associated with Germany’s resurgence in 2006 and would be the facesaving gamble of men who have been left looking embarrassingly ill- prepared by the events of recent weeks (not that this is now any obstacle to success in modern Britain, mind you). Without doubt, arriving in France, Glenn and Ashworth’s only
plan was to muddle through with another two years of Hodgson. Having got out of the group, albeit in second place, they did not countenance a result so humbling that the manager would have no choice but to quit.
Nor did they bank on Gareth Southgate seeing through their plan to make him england’s temporary stooge while Wenger made his mind up. They thought he was a patsy. Southgate has actually emerged from this with considerably more substance than many imagined. He was considered to be an FA man. it turns out he is his own.
So what of Klinsmann and the foreign alternatives? Currently coaching USA, Klinsmann is letting it be known he would like to work in english football. Hodgson’s job would appeal — but, if not, a significant position in the Premier league.
rich, isn’t it? one imagines he isn’t thinking Hull or Sunderland. Those aren’t the sort of jobs the foreign managers take. it is only the english that trash their reputations at no-hope outposts. A pity, really. if Klinsmann took Hull, Bruce would be free to manage england and his successor would get the same opportunity to prove his worth that is afforded to domestic coaches. You know, those useless ones who keep getting relegated and finishing in the bottom half of the table, making them unworthy to manage internationally.
indeed, the most risible assertion of recent days is that england’s players are underwhelmed by the candidates from their own country. one wonders who in the group felt empowered to inform the football Association of that view, considering the only credible performance against iceland was a four-minute cameo delivered by an 18-year-old.
The same players who failed to defend a long throw from a bloke who couldn’t always make Cardiff’s team last season now think they are better than the likes of Bruce, Allardyce or Alan Pardew and want a significant foreign candidate. one befitting the status of men who even have their plugholes pimped. leaving aside the memories of what happened the last time england’s footballers met cold- eyed italian professionalism in the shape of fabio Capello, the arrogance and presumption is quite startling. ENGLISH coaches struggle because they tend to be saddled with struggling clubs. Given the type of challenge that is typically handed to an englishman, Dick Advocaat, felix Magath, Avram Grant and remi Garde did not prove any more adept.
it confirms how little english footballers study the game if they think laurent Blanc’s record at Paris Saint- Germain is confirmation of his brilliance; it shows their delusion if they believe their recent performances merit the attention of a significant foreign coach.
How many of them have attracted the interest of the major european clubs of late? How often have these coaches wished to work with english players without the FA’s largesse to sweeten the deal?
english owners, english money. That is what appeals. include the FA in that, as the highest payers of any national federation.
Yet what would it say of our game if Bruce, Allardyce and others like them were saddled with football’s real impossible jobs and the most important position in english football was given to a coach such as Klinsmann, who has never, throughout his career, shown the slightest inclination to work with an english player.
Klinsmann came to england twice, successfully too, but those were commercial arrangements. Klinsmann was one of the players used to boost Sir Alan Sugar’s standing with Tottenham supporters in season 1994-95, after the fallout with Terry Venables, and he returned to the same club midway through the 1997-98 season and saved them from relegation.
So, rightly, Klinsmann is fondly remembered. He was magnificent for Tottenham both times, always tried his best, adapted to the unique culture of english football, and did so with a smile. When he left, he announced the news at a london comedy club — to prove Germans do have a sense of humour. Ho ho.
So kudos to Klinsmann and, if he wants a job in the Premier league, he will be welcomed back warmly.
Yet where is england’s famed DNA if the FA snub men who have been at the coalface of our football for decades for a man who has never coached a single minute of any game here?
england’s manager should be english and he should be appointed as a matter of priority. No interims, no caretakers, no endless consultation process.
if Ashworth, Glenn and Gill do not already know where they are going, then they are not the men for a job that is really no more impossible than disposing efficiently of iceland.