
The England Soccer manager circus has kicked off again with another resignation that had nothing to do with the game itself. The first irony seems to be that as soon as an Italian resigns over a racist issue with the captain that almost the entire nation gets xenophobic by screaming how much they need to make sure the next manager is English! And this after an Italian who was statistically the most successful manager that England have ever had; a 67% win ratio to the great Sir Alf Ramsay’s 61%! Lovely to also see in those stat tables Glenn Hoddle alongside Sir Alf on 61%. It is good to remember two things about Hoddle; he lost his job over a philosophical statement, not for footballing reasons, and it pretty much ended what was one of the most promising managerial careers of the era!
As the English press, public and footballing community all call for Harry Redknapp, just cleared by a jury literally hours before the job becomes vacant, to succeed Capello there are a few points to consider. Firstly, is the job any longer big enough to entice Harry away from his most exciting run at the premier League title with Spurs. Last year’s World Cup was a poor and unexciting spectacle. The Premier League is much more exciting and even bigger is the Champions League in which English teams are seen as major players. At international level England simply aren’t. One World Cup win almost fifty years ago is a blip on their records. It has to be understood by Englishmen everywhere that England are the Bolton of international football; mid-table but never really a threat to the big boys!
The call for an English manager is all very well while Harry Redknapp is doing well at Spurs. If Harry is clever enough, and he kind of confessed to not being of PhD intelligence in court last week, to stay in a much better job which Englishman do they then turn to? A quick look at the Premier League and we find 7 Scottish managers, 2 Northern Ireland, 1 Republic Of Ireland, 1 Welsh, 2 Italian, a Portuguese, a Dutch and a French, leaving just four English managers. It is not exactly a rich seam of managerial talent and one has to wonder why the other British Isles countries who know their place at international level can produce so many more good managers.
However, maybe I’ve just read it all wrong and there is a recognition in all of this that actually England are not competing at a world level so a manager like Stuart Pearce, Gareth Southgate or even Paul Gascoigne, all untried at any kind of level, will do! Ah! Fair enough and that makes sense of Wayne’s Tweet, "Gutted capello has quit. Good guy and top coach. Got to be english to replace him. Harry redknapp for me." There seems a certain amount of contradiction there! Maybe a cunning way of getting rid of Spurs in the title race.