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...