Notes from a sporting week – 26/11/07

Reality finally dawns for dithering FA:

Standing in the rain, sheltering under his umbrella, watching his charges lose 3-2 to Croatia to missout on Euro 2008, England football coach Steve McLaren added another memorable picture of failed national team managers down the years. His will sit alongside Graham Taylor’s rant at the linesman during the 2-0 loss to The Netherlands in 1993, Kevin Keegan’s rain-soaked wave after the last match at the old Wembley Stadium and Sven Goran Eriksson’s pained expression and wringing hands as once again a quarterfinal proved one barrier to many.

McLaren’s was an appointment that was handled badly and got worse as the Euro 2008 qualification went on. FA chief executive Brian Barwick failed to convince when he claimed that McLaren had been the number one choice and McLaren failed to convince that he was an international coach throughout his 18-month tenure.

He can claim to have been unfortunate with injuries, with John Terry, Rio Ferdinand, Ashley Cole and Michael Owen all missing from the decisive game, but you make your own luck and someone as fragile as Owen should never have been risked in the pointless friendly against Austria six days before the big one.

Along with his ill fortune he was anything but decisive. At the start of his reign he talked of round pegs for round holes, but promptly played Steven Gerrard on the right of midfield after leaving David Beckham out of his initial squads. His handling of Beckham went from the sublime to the ridiculous. Firstly he made an example of the former captain by leaving him out of squads, then recalled him for matches in summer 2007 when things went slightly awry. Then came the truly bizarre when he flew to Los Angeles, not to watch him play in a mediocre celebrity match, but to have a chat. Surely the FA’s budget will stretch to a few trans-Atlantic phone calls?

There were times when McLaren did make the right calls. The choice of Gareth Barry as a holding player was vindicated in the wins over Russia and Israel in October, as was the choice of Shaun Wright-Phillips in place of the injured Beckham. Sadly both put in woeful performances on Wednesday night and failed to make it past halftime. The choice of Scott Carson was also the correct one. Paul Robinson’s line of credit had come to an end long before his errors away to Russia and he should have made way long before.

One feature of the McLaren years will be the failure of the team when they lined-up in anything but the 4-4-2 formation. He was right to try the 3-5-2 system, but not for the first time away to Croatia, where they put in an abysmal showing to lose 2-0. The 4-5-1 on Wednesday was right in the circumstance, but as is so often the case, it was the execution that let it down, with the players reverting to their default tactics of lumping the ball forward to Peter Crouch, without offering any support. Quite how players, especially those who are paid weekly six-figure salaries, are unable to trap the ball, pass to a teammate and then find space is staggering. Blaming the pitch as some tried to do was laughable, as the Croatia players had no problem playing a fluid, passing game on the same patch of grass.

Hopefully the schmozzle that has been created will focus minds strongly on the sea change that needs to be made in English football. The FA are as culpable as McLaren in all this, from the rushed appointment (why they couldn’t wait till after the World Cup was never properly explained), to the four-year contract he was given, thus leaving them with £2.5million to shell out in recompense. England’s European neighbours must be shaking their heads in wonder at a federation that can haemorrhage money on four-year contracts for their managers, rather than wait and see if they make it through qualification, which should be the minimum achievement for England. Could you imagine Italy keeping Roberto Donandoni if they had missed out on Austria-Switzerland next summer, or France with Raymond Domenech or Germany and Jochim Louw? Quite staggering was McLaren’s statement that he was taking responsibility, but wouldn’t be resigning. So quite what responsibility he was taking remained unasked and at least Keegan had the nous and self-respect to realise that the game was up and jump before he was pushed.

Of course now the job for the FA is finding McLaren’s successor. At least there have been some optimistic noises coming out of Soho Square, with chief executive Brian Barwick being given sole charge for finding the next man, rather than being hamstrung by the ridiculously outdated FA committee of 12 wise men, as he was when appointing McLaren. Hopefully the FA will wait until Euro 2008 is over, or at least until the end of the European season. There should be no need to appoint immediately, with FA Director of Development Sir Trevor Brooking more than capable of steering the ship until next summer. After all it’s not like they will be playing any competitive matches until September when World Cup qualifying begins.

Despite evidence to contrary, there is still a lobby group for an Englishman to be appointed. The usual suspects of Sam Allardyce, Harry Redknapp, Alan Curbishley and Steve Coppell have announced that they do not want the job, when all they are doing with such public statements is trying to get their unheralded names in the mix. The only English coaches who should be a part of the process are Bobby Robson and Roy Hodgson, two men who have been successes overseas and have a far broader mind than the little Englanders who have helped over hype the Premier League and the English players therein.

Mention has been made of Alan Shearer being parachuted in, much as Marco van Basten and Jurgen Kinsmann have been with The Netherlands and Germany respectively. However, such an idea overlooks one glaring contrast. Van Basten and Kinsmann both won titles internationally (and no the 1997 Le Tournoi does not count) and in Europe. Both speak more than their mother tongue, a demonstration of the far broader mind that they have to football matters, than Shearer who was a thug as a player and continues to encourage such behaviour as a television pundit. Who can forget him encouraging Wayne Rooney to ‘stick one’ on Cristiano Ronaldo following the Portuguese’s supposed part in Rooney’s sending off at the last World Cup.

Another Englishman who has been mentioned in dispatches is Glenn Hoddle who led the team from 1996 to 1999 before he went a little too public with his thoughts on reincarnation. There is no doubt that England played some of the best football in recent years under Hoddle, he made them tactically flexible and he solved the issue of the lack of left-midfielders with a 3-5-2 formation. However, since his fall from grace he has hardly covered himself in glory during coaching spells with Wolves, Southampton and Tottenham and he seems a little too comfortable on the Sky TV couch to return to the inevitable personal attacks that would come his way with the England coaches job.

Thankfully sense has been seen and this time there is not the overwhelming tide against appointing another non-Englishman, as there was when Eriksson stepped aside. Jose Mourinho who would be a popular, if pragmatic choice, has said he isn’t interested, as has Aston Villa’s Ulsterman manager Martin O’Neill, who was Barwick’s favourite a year ago but was a little too forthright for the FA selection committee (something his ex-boss Brian Clough would no doubt be extremely proud of). An assortment of other names have been banded about, including Felipe Luiz Scolari, who was put off last time by the English media, Guus Hiddink, who is contracted to Russia till 2010 and Blackburn’s Welsh manager Mark Hughes.

At the moment the only ones free are Fabio Capello, Italy’s World Cup winning coach, Marcello Lippi and Klinsmann. Of the Italian pair Capello would be the preferable having studied English for the last three years, a language Lippi has little grasp of. Plus he demonstrated his ability to make tough decisions and put noses out of joint to achieve success when he led Real Madrid to the Spanish title in 2006-07. It may not have been pretty, but it was their first title for four years. How the under-performing likes of Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, John Terry and Rio Ferdinand could do with such authoritative management, so as to keep their minds on the job.

Klinsmann would be an interesting choice, especially if he wanted to continue living in southern California, as he did with Germany. One suspects that the deal making would be too much for the FA and with his trusty side-kick, Louw, coaching Germany, the team that helped him take Germany to last year’s World Cup semifinals would not be in place.

It is with this lack of candidates that the time should be taken and an appointment made after the European Championships. Things will change, coaches will come and go and circumstances will alter. Who knows how much more Hiddink can take of Roman Abramovich’s meddling in the Russian team or if Frank Rijkaard may may think it’s time to move on should he lead Barcelona to a second Champions League title.

But whoever and whenever they appoint someone, the FA has far more important and far-reaching decisions to make. First of these should be the rapid completion of the neglected FA Centre of Excellence in Burton-on-Trent. Once that is up and running, alongside a coaching structure for 9 to 13 year-olds that concentrates on cherishing possession and the ability to think around problems, can England fans look ahead to the future with some sort of optimism. The centre should also work with our coaches and make so that in the future teams such as Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool don’t look overseas for the new man at the helm.

Trevor Brooking has being saying for years that if we didn’t get to grips with the coaching system in this country then the day would come when we would be grateful just to qualify for competitions. Well that day has arrived and it is time for the FA to act. It is not like other countries are standing still either. Australia, a country not unlike our own who traditionally favour the brawn over the brain, have recently published a report on technical development so that more Harry Kewells and fewer Kevin Muscats come through their system. The first thing is to get children playing smaller sided games, on smaller pitches, with smaller balls and smaller goals. They are, after all, smaller people so to asking them to play on full-size pitches must seem to them as though they are playing on a pitch the size of the Sahara dessert. Few players in less space means more touches of the ball and less inclination to belt the life out of the ball towards a goal that appears to be the other side of the country so distant it is.

Croatia’s players talked of the arrogance of the English after their win on Wednesday night and how it inspired them. Fifty-four years ago another East European team came to Wembley and shocked the perceived better English team. I’m talking, of course about Hungary, the Magnificent Magyars, who destroyed Billy Wright’s team 6-3 with passing and movement that the hosts had never previously seen. They then prevailed 7-1 in Budapest a month later to remove any lingering doubt over their superiority. An island race the English most definitely are, but there is now the alarming need to look beyond our borders to solve our problems. If we don’t swallow our pride and learn from other football cultures, then failure to make the major international tournaments will become too regular an occurrence.
JI 26/11/07