Southgate has his work cut out
How England and Scotland bosses compare
THE dictionary definition of poisoned chalice is: “An assignment, award or honour which is likely to prove a disadvantage or source of problems to the recipient.”
The phrase was famously used in Macbeth.
Four centuries later, the expression has become synonymous with the saga of England managers, in itself something of a Shakespearean tragedy.
No one has been able to crack it for 50 years. Some have made a laudable attempt, but most have crashed and burned, often off the pitch.
Sam Allardyce is the latest and most spectacular failure. He lasted 67 days and didn’t even get a game at Wembley.
He made a big thing about England being his lifelong dream job. He gave you the impression that it meant so much, he’d do it for nothing.
Well, we all know now that wasn’t quite true. Even £3m a year plus bonuses wasn’t enough.
He joins a long line of England bosses to fall ignominiously on to their swords.
The exit routes have been many and varied – Don Revie taking Middle East cash, Glenn Hoddle’s crass comments about karma, Kevin Keegan quitting in a Wembley toilet, Steve McClaren sheltering under his brolly, Fabio Capello digging in his heels over John Terry’s captaincy, Graham Taylor painted as a turnip and shouting: “Do I not like that!”
Sven-Göran Eriksson clung on to his job for a few months after being caught in a newspaper sting before the 2006 World Cup but the climate within the game was different then.
The moral bar has been raised by the FA’s crusade against FIFA corruption so it was impossible for them to overlook what might seem to the fan in the street to be a relatively minor technical offence.
Allardyce, for all his experience in the game, failed to realise that the England job required a different standard of behaviour.
The FA have turned to Gareth Southgate for the next four matches, knowing that in terms of integrity and knowledge of the workings of the FA, they couldn’t have found a safer pair of hands.
Much is made of the experience factor in international management. The received wisdom is that it’s a job for someone who’s been round the block.
Well, Allardyce had been a club manager for 956 games when he was appointed!
Roy Hodgson took charge of 945 matches pre-England, Eriksson 764 and Capello 554,
yet all three failed miserably. Southgate has had 150 games at Middlesbrough and, crucially, 34 with England Under-21s.
He’s 46, the same age Joachim Loew was when he took over the Germany team. Loew wasn’t very experienced, either. Just 210 club matches. But, again crucially, he’d had a period as assistant to Jurgen Klinsmann.
What about McClaren, I hear you ask. Wasn’t he an internal solution, in his mid40s with limited club experience? That didn’t work, did it?
No, it didn’t, but the weakness of that appointment was that McClaren was tainted by his association with the failings of the Eriksson regime. It would have been like appointing Gary Neville to succeed Hodgson. Previous caretaker managers – Joe Mercer, Howard Wilkinson, Peter Taylor, Stuart Pearce – had no chance of getting the job permanently but Southgate does.
For the FA, he’s a known quantity with no possibility of hidden skeletons.
And, let’s face it, if England are top of the qualifying group after the Scotland game in November, any capable manager should be able to get them to Russia.
Southgate indicated after Hodgson went that he didn’t want to hold the fort while the FA waited to see if Arsene Wenger would be available at the end of his Arsenal contract next June.
He’s a good company man, so Southgate has agreed to step in now because someone has to. If he passes his four-game audition, it would be unreasonable to ask him to carry on until such time as Wenger says yay or nay.
One doubt expressed about Southgate’s suitability is whether he is a strong enough character.
If Big Sam appeared in awe of Wayne Rooney’s star status, for instance, how is nice, sensible Gareth going to get on?
Those who know him will testify that Southgate has much more steel than his reputation dictates.
Besides, Alf Ramsey was only 43 when he became England manager.
It could be that Southgate does well enough to be offered the job but refuses it. He may consider it not worth the hassle.
After all, what sensible person willingly drinks from a poisoned chalice?