FA chief Glenn happy to reach the last eight
ENGLAND manager Gareth Southgate is in the enviable position of knowing he will keep his job even if his side lose all three of their World Cup group games.
FA chief executive Martin Glenn made that firm promise after the World Cup draw in Moscow last December, claiming that Southgate was still the best choice for the role whatever happens in Russia this summer.
But Glenn has higher expectations and regards winning one game in the knockout stage as an acceptable improvement on the past two horror tournaments under Roy Hodgson.
That would take England into the last eight, which they also reached in 2002 and 2006 with the ‘golden generation’ teams.
PUBLISHERS Headline are fortunate in the extreme to have been approached by the Sun to keep their iconic Football Year Book alive after the sport’s statistical bible lost Sky Sports as sponsors — as revealed by
Sports Agenda. Yet in the following days Headline’s dozy sports publisher Jonathan Taylor could not even be bothered to take a call from your columnist offering to help find new backers again — even though Headline themselves had credited Sports Agenda for alerting Sky Sports to come on board in 2003 when Rothmans withdrew.
CARD games have proved troublesome for team morale in previous England camps, when thousands of pounds have been won and lost. But so far Gareth Southgate’s squad appear content to play harmless Uno, with seemingly no betting involved.
Uno, which involves matching cards by number, colour or symbol, is popular in the Tottenham dressing room. Former and current Spurs players Kieran Trippier (above) and Kyle Walker were part of a five- strong Uno game, also involving John Stones, Jamie Vardy and Harry Maguire, taking place in the Starbucks coffee shop at St George’s Park last Tuesday.
THE Moroccan Football Federation has again written to FIFA on the issue of US territories Guam, American Samoa, US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico participating in the 2026 World Cup vote despite conflicts over the USA being part of the three-country bid involving Mexico and Canada in competition with Morocco. The Moroccans have pointed out the population in those four territories are US citizens or US nationals.