England's Wayne Rooney. Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images for Sony
Roy Hodgson hasn’t yet been in the England manager job for 24 hours but already he is feeling the molten warmth that accompanies life in the England boss hot seat. Given England fans’ forever somewhat unrealistic expectations for the national team, the managerial position is widely considered to be one of the toughest in the game. And Hodgson’s cause is not helped by the fact that the Football Association chose to hand him the job ahead of Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp, the fans’ overwhelming favorite to replace Fabio Capello. Most of the British press has been reasonably welcoming to Hodgson. But The Sun tabloid has made his job that much harder with a day one front-page spread which mercilessly pokes fun at the new man in charge.
The Sun 'welcomes' Hodgson
So, what can West Bromwich Albion gaffer Hodgson do to convince the nation he is the best man for the job? Here’s the pick of the best advice coming from the less knee-jerky corners of the sports commentariat.
First and foremost, underdogs (like England) must be defensive and functional. Influential football tactics blog ZonalMarking.Net insisted that, “even the most ardent England supporter realize that the team is currently a rank outsider. And the only way outsiders have overachieved in recent major international tournaments is by being defensive and functional.” The blog pointed out that Uruguay won the 2011 Copa America in this fashion, and Zambia triumphed at this year’s Africa Cup of Nations with the lowest pass completion rate in the tournament, something also achieved by Greece in Euro 2004. “Uruguay (again) and Ghana were the surprise performers at the 2010 World Cup, both being inherently reactive, defensive sides. It’s difficult to name a recent underdog that has overachieved by playing attractive football,” argued ZonalMarking.Net, which concluded that conservative “system manager” Hodgson is therefore an entirely suitable manager for England.
Roy Hodgson has worked for 16 clubs in eight countries. He is reported to have a grasp of English, French, German, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, Italian and Swedish.
Don’t bother kissing up to the press. Barney Roney of The Guardian The Sport Blog suggested that Hodgson’s media-unfriendliness could actually turn out to work in his favour: “Perhaps this recalcitrance might even end up as an unlikely trump card. With the football press currently fixed in the public imagination as a sherry-stinking swarm of agenda-ridden malevolents – and going by the principle that my enemy’s enemy is my friend – if anything is likely to endear Hodgson to England’s support it is perhaps his very media-unfriendliness.”
Senior players Rio Ferdinand and Wayne Rooney, who went on Twitter to back Redknapp, have kept silent on the Hodgson appointment so far.
The reported rift between Rio and JT needs closing. Sam Wallace of The Independent argued that sorting out the mess at the back is Hodgson’s first priority. The apparent England first-choice centre-back pairing of John Terry and Rio Ferdinand may be divided by “potential differences” over the race case involving the latter’s brother Anton and “that threatens to divide the squad ahead of the European Championship,” reported Wallace. He argued that “central” to Hodgson’s pre-tournament task “will be discovering whether Rio Ferdinand can play alongside Terry,” who is in court on 9 July to answer the charge of racially aggravated abuse against Ferdinand’s brother Anton. Hodgson said yesterday that he would try to speak to the two players in advance of him naming the squad for the European Championship on 14 May.
Can England win the European Championships under Hodgson? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.
Must work harder than he ever has before. “Hodgson may have a four-year contract but, first and foremost, this job has to be about short-termism,” insisted Daniel Taylor at The Guardian Sport Blog. “There can be no other way when England’s first game against France is so near.” Taylor spelled just how much Hodgson has to do: “Hodgson has a matter of weeks to identify and appoint his backroom staff, work out the best possible squad, select a captain, devise a formation, invoke a spirit of togetherness and, not forgetting, put in place an entirely separate strategy to compensate for the first two games when Wayne Rooney is suspended. Before then, he has to decide on the players he wants to take to a training camp in Marbella and go through all the logistics that Stuart Pearce has put in place to decide whether he wants to do it differently.” “If he has time, he may also want to make a quick telephone call to Paul Scholes to float the idea of coming out of international retirement, even if he probably already knows the answer,” suggested Taylor.