Gareth Southgate should have taken radical action over England captaincy, Hal Robson-Kanu may be needed by Wales and how long can Didier Deschamps do without Karim Benzema?Captaincy is among the biggest red herrings in football: all players are supposed to set examples with their performances and leaders lead with or without an armband. And yet the England captaincy matters simply because a lot of people think it matters. Steven Gerrard was upset when it was taken off him by a caretaker manager, Stuart Pearce, and David Beckham was uplifted when it was given to him by a caretaker manager, Peter Taylor. The country’s latest caretaker manager, Gareth Southgate, should have de-fetishised the armband by announcing England do not need a...
It’s a really troubling conclusion but is backed up by the fact that the best we can do in terms of home-grown options is a mere handful at mostly struggling Premier League clubsWhat a thoroughly depressing week for English football. By the end of it there was almost a feeling of relief at the Daily Telegraph’s investigation turning up a few more names, because it allayed the suspicion that the object of the whole exercise from the start had simply been to bring down the England manager.While that false impression prevailed there had been a certain amount of sympathy for Sam Allardyce, on the grounds that entrapment should be used only as a last resort to bring criminality to light,...
Some will be unhappy but who is enthused by the English candidates to succeed Sam Allardyce?It is 16 years now since the Football Association had the temerity to appoint its first foreign England manager, namely Sven-Goran Eriksson, and it can be enlightening to look back at the coverage of the time and remind yourself how many people seemed to think it was the end of civilisation as we knew it.The Daily Mail is a good place to start when it comes to the froth of moral indignation that greeted the Swede. “England’s humiliation knows no end. In their trendy eagerness to appoint a designer foreigner, did the FA pause for so much as a moment to consider the depth of...
England get the managers they deserve but FA’s mistake was not in appointing Sam Allardyce to high office but in fostering the culture that led to his downfallFarewell then, Big Sam. We’ll always have the good times. Like that Adam Lallana goal. Or being 1-0 up for the last 40 seconds of an away qualifying win in Slovakia. Which was basically the same as that Adam Lallana goal. Plus of course there was that moment just after the Adam Lallana goal when you said “it’s not for me to say where Wayne Rooney plays”. Which was absolutely correct, as it turns out.There have been failed England managers before. There have been funny England managers. There have been depressing ones too....
Sam Allardyce’s reign is over, the buffoon paying the price for hawking himself around only a few weeks after landing the England jobThe cartoonist Mike Stokoe neatly sums up the madness of the England job with a wonderful little sketch that hangs from one of the walls of the National Football Museum in Manchester. The cartoon shows an interview for the job and the applicant sitting nervously in front of three Football Association blazers. “And if you lose one game on the trot you’re sacked.”Sam Allardyce has certainly excelled himself being the man who managed it after one match, one victory and the grand total of 67 days in office. Everything had been going so well after that win in...