Hodgson is caught up with mumbling patriotic platitudes

AS THE band churned out the familiar air, Wayne Rooney’s mouth formed a string of stilted, half-remembered phrases: ‘Send her victorious / Happy and glorious…’ The television director lingered on the close-up, searching for signs of patriotic fervour. Rooney simply frowned and mumbled on. Given the choice, he would surely have remained silent, since that is his preference. But he hadn’t been given the choice.

Roy Hodgson had insisted prior to the match against Ecuador that his players sing the English national anthem very loudly, in order to demonstrate that they are ‘proud and happy’ to wear the shirt. It was a fatuous gesture designed to win a tub-thumping headline and a younger, more confident Rooney might have ignored the demand. But these days he senses his England place is in the balance, so obedience was the prudent course. It all seemed dreadfully unfair.

The principle involved is selfevident. A robust democracy respects the right to remain silent when its anthem is played. Gary Neville, the England coach, would appear to share that view, since he declined to sing the anthem in each of his 85 international appearances. Yet here we had Hodgson denying that elementary freedom to Rooney and the others. It shone a worrying light upon the manager’s current state of mind.

The cliché insists that the England job drives them all mad in the end. Yet the present manager has always seemed immune to such pressures. This is partly due to the range of his managerial experience – which includes four international teams and four Premier League clubs – but still more to his personality.

For Hodgson has a hinterland. There is an abiding sense that his love for the game falls comfortably short of obsession; that he understands how the world works outside football. After the past fractious week or so, we are less certain.

At this stage of affairs, the phoney war, Hodgson finds himself giving a whole string of media conferences, despite having little to impart. His predecessors coped in their own, idiosyncratic fashion; from Fabio Capello, who said little since he mistrusted his English, way back to Alf Ramsey, who said even less since he mistrusted his audience.

But Hodgson has always possessed the ability to fill reporters’ notebooks with a stream of platitudes.

With the anthem misjudgment and the consequent embarrassment to Rooney, his assurance appears less serene. That impression is enhanced by the maladroit manner in which he dealt with Ross Barkley’s (pictured) display against Ecuador.

In seeking to spare the youngster the burden of excessive praise, he tilted the balance too far. ‘He’s got to learn when to release the ball … For every good turn, there was a time when he lost the ball,’ he said. He sounded almost curmudgeonly. In normal times, he would have handled it with ease. But these pressurised days are quite different and, for a moment, he seemed to be floundering. Now, trivial though it may seem, this actually matters because Hodgson matters. For the next few weeks, the manager of the England football team will become the most scrutinised individual in English public life. His moods will be interpreted, his utterances diligently analysed. Failure, in terms of a premature departure, will attract rancorous attacks. These will be led by the small tribe of armchair warriors who opposed his appointment, resent his indifference to their opinions and have spent these past two years willing him to stumble. The English public at large, whose irrational expectations seem to be growing by the day, may be no less hostile.

But if he should succeed…? It would represent a miracle, of course; a squad selected from less than a third of the Premier League, a team skilfully fished from a pitifully shallow pool of talent. The rewards would include an open-top bus ride, an automatic knighthood and the guarantee of immortality.

His fate will settle somewhere between the two, with honourable elimination the reward for his endeavours. But such matters are beyond a manager’s control and the realisation is proving unsettling. And so, in his desperation to affect events, he creates a distracting drama from a populist gesture. And all before a ball has been kicked.

One day, when he reflects on the World Cup of 2014, Hodgson will look back on his decision and wonder: ‘Was it really worth the fuss?’ I suspect I know his answer.

Meanwhile, a young man with a mass of anxieties flooding his mind will stand in line, mumbling patriotic platitudes, aware of his duty to appear ‘proud and happy’. While the rest of the world gets on with the football.