Has There Been A Worse England Manager?
Redville
As we turn our attention to England’s first international of the season, albeit a friendly, one can’t help but feel a continued sense of deja-vu.
Haven’t we been here before? We’re stuck with a next to useless coach in the knowledge that, realistically, we will have to wait until after Euro 2008 before he is sacked and the next ‘rebuilding process’ can begin.
However long it does take, it is going to happen because, in my opinion, there’s about the same chance of Big Brother’s Charlie becoming the next Prime Minister as there is of Steve McCarrot bringing home silverware at any level, let alone on the international stage.
It’s a favoured media hobby to hastily sling mud at any and every coach that feels brave enough to take on the ostensibly poisoned chalice of England manager. And as the Premiership continues to expand beyond all predictions, so public expectations for the national team grow. It’s obviously not an easy job, and I don’t like mudslinging, but let’s ask a serious and valid question. Has there ever been a worse England manager?
Steve McCarrot is a poor man’s Graham Taylor. That anyone could be a poor man’s Taylor seems improbable until you look at their comparative profiles. Both have an overly pragmatic approach to management, utterly devoid in the art of progressive football. Both favour a direct style and have been vulnerable to and influenced by media criticism. Both would pick Stewart Downing. Both lack charisma and McClaren, like his Taylorian predecessor, is patently out of his depth.
The FA could initially defend themselves to an extent with the Taylor appointment, in view of his relative success and experience at smaller clubs such as Watford and Villa. But McClaren doesn’t even possess a half decent club record.
Save from a jammy and ultimately fruitless run in the Uefa Cup, he has nothing to show for his only previous managerial position, apart punctured tyres and hate mail from angry fans. If you think the average football fanatic was surprised by McClaren’s England appointment, imagine the amazement of the Boro fans who had endured his foibles on a weekly basis throughout a relegation threatened season. And imagine how horrified big Sam Allardyce, a really decent English manager, must have felt at being beaten to the job by McClaren. Is it just me that finds this stranger than fiction?
In short, McClaren is a physio who’s had ONE job as a manager and largely failed.
On this basis, the highly esteemed board at The FA deemed him an obvious candidate. In a typically indecisive gesture, they bowed to apparent public pressure to get an English coach and came to the conclusion that McClaren was the right second choice (at least Scolari had balls). He wouldn’t even be the best choice if he was the only candidate. The mind really boggles as to what the FA used as their selection criteria. Must be ginger? Mustn’t have any experience of top-level management at all? Must have been regularly booed off the pitch in previous role? Must temporarily take the heat off us by being a complete disaster?
One has to ask who is more inept in this comedy of errors. The FA or the doomed manager? And the biggest frustration of all, is that we, the fans, have no choice but to endure failure in another major tournament before the ‘inquest begins’ where McClaren takes all the blame before leaving with a Keeganesque tear in his eye.
I, for one, couldn’t care less what nationality the coach is. I just want us to equal the sum of our considerable footballing parts for once in my life. Indeed, in an era when the English Premier League is so multicultural it amazes me that nationality should be considered when selecting an England manager. It’s so fickle. Sven may have had his faults (faults that were exaggerated by an impatient media) but in terms of football intelligence and managerial substance, he’s in a completely different league to McClaren. And Sven wasn’t even a great tactician himself.
Anyway, it’s not about getting rid of the manager anymore, it’s about replacing the entire FA with people who know about football rather than overweight dawdlers who look and act more like disgraced MPs than protectors of the national obsession.
You wouldn’t go to a mechanic if you were feeling ill so why ask a businessmen to make football decisions? If England are to be successful at international level, we need a complete overhaul of the FA and we need to give decision making power to the best, most accomplished people in English football, people who know and care about the game. Go to Wenger, go to Ferguson and go to Martin O’Neill. They’re the real protectors of ‘The Faith’. Go to people who have been there and done that.
Ask yourself, how come Greece can win The European Championship but England can’t get past a quarter-final? It’s obvious to any football supporter in the world that England has the human resources to achieve so why aren’t we successful? Because the people who make the decisions give Steve McClaren a job as England manager. With respect, how far down the lists of Sir Fergie et al, would McClaren have been, if they had made the decision? McClaren ain’t been there and certainly ain’t done that. But why shoot the messenger? It’s time to blitz the FA.
There is, of course, a short-term solution. Give Terry Venables the reigns, as of tomorrow. Let Steve McClaren massage the thighs and egos of the players, as he did so well at Derby and United, and leave the best England coach in the last 20 years to start making the critical football decisions. This statement probably makes far too much sense to be considered by the FA but it’s the only way we can begin to dream about success at Euro 2008.
