Wales stride on in Euro 2016, but England have fallen in the round of 16 – chopped down by Iceland, a team jointly managed on a part-time basis by a dentist. Dai Sport columnist NEIL MASUDA examines the rotting cavities and bleeding gums left exposed by another smack in the mouth for English football suffered under Roy Hodgson.
Steve McClaren must be a much relieved man.
Until Monday night, he was the character derided as the exemplar of the worst modern-day England football manager.
Step down, Steve, there’s a new wally in town.
Yes, the ‘Wally with the Brolly’ has been superseded by the ‘Wally with the Lolly’ as Roy Hodgson, the Three Lions boss initially appointed on May 1, 2012, heads off into the sunset. If reports are true, he pocketed an annual salary of £3.5million.
That adds up to around £14million of money paid out by the Football Association of England.
For what, precisely?
The greatest ineptitude displayed by any boss of the England national team is the answer.
“I believe the squad can win the World Cup,’ said Hodgson on May 12, 2014, prior to England’s worst display in a group stage campaign (losing to Italy 2-1, Uruguay 2-1 and a goalless draw against Costa Rica) since 1958.
Now, his reputation is once again in tatters after England put on one of their most abject displays in a competitive international tournament and lost 2-1 to Iceland, a country with a population (330,000) the size of Leicester’s.
TV pundit and former Arsenal legend Ian Wright concisely described the England performance in the Euro 2016 Championship finals as ‘Rubbish!’ And you just knew he was having to bite hard on his tongue to prevent a few choicer sentiments being expressed to the watching millions. Because Wrighty suffers pain when England fail to do well – his heartfelt passion is clearly evident.
Hodgson, on the other hand, is a man with whom the word passion can rarely be associated.
He has been repeatedly described as ‘an honourable man’, which is not necessarily the sine qua non for footballing success.
One doubts whether such an epithet would fall from the lips of Dr Eva Caneiro when describing Jose Mourinho, yet the Special One would have always been more concerned with winning honours than being labelled a man of honour.
The FA did have a chance to sign Mourinho as England, following the Brolly Wally’s departure, in 2007 for £6million and very nearly did. How different things might have been.
But ‘the honourable man’ was in charge on Monday and he was shown up once again as being totally clueless.
England had drawn 1-1 with Russia, somehow just about managed to pip Wales 2-1 with an injury-time winner, and drew 0-0 with Slovakia in the group stages, before succumbing in the last 16 to the lower league men and part-timers of Iceland, from whom nothing can be taken away because they put on a robust and gutsy display that was the antithesis of England’s lacklustre, amateurish antics from their overpaid prima donnas.
True, there are some good players within England’s ranks, but Harry Kane (as has been said here recently) was burnt-out and a mere shadow of the man who lit up the Premier League in his second season; Wayne Rooney once again showed how massively overrated and overhyped he always is (again, here it was said he should be used as an impact sub at best, but preferably shouldn’t have made the final 23 in the squad) before he was finally hooked for what ought to be his last game for England; Raheem Sterling won the Three Lions penalty but did little else of note; and the list goes on.
Only Marcus Rashford, belatedly sent on in a desperate last throw of the dice by Hodgson, showed how absurd it was that he had not started the game. Jamie Vardy also provided an urgent injection of excitement and intent lacking from the rest of the England side.
But, for Hodgson, his England gravy train has hit the buffers.
When he arrived, his appointment by the FA seemed a bow to convention in the shape of a ‘steady Eddie’ and, from his immediate record at club level prior to his elevation, it promised mediocrity at best.
But, with this latest shameful Brexit following their woeful 2014 World Cup, England didn’t even get that.