Five weeks ago, while criticising the Football Association’s efforts to find a successor to Fabio Capello, I wrote in the context of Roy Hodgson: “I am not sure that the England managerial contest is any place for a serious candidate.”
It is a pleasure to take those words back and congratulate David Bernstein and Sir Trevor Brooking on their choice.
My only regret, having been advocating Hodgson as England manager since the last century, is that Bernstein and Brooking were not in positions of such influence in 2000, when the FA embarked on the foolish and horribly expensive policy of hiring foreigners who had made their reputations in the club game.
First came Sven-Goran Eriksson and, after the ill-starred tenure of Steve McClaren, they blundered on with Capello — even extending the Italian’s £6 million-a-year contract before seeing how he would fare at the World Cup in South Africa.
How much was wasted over a decade in the breaking of a traditional principle observed by most of the leading football nations such as Germany, Italy and Brazil?
A rough calculation, made by adding up the inflated salaries of Eriksson, Capello and a host of mainly compatriot assistants and subtracting the job’s true value — of their English predecessors, only Kevin Keegan received more than £500,000 — is that £40million gushed out of the English game for no good reason.
Had it instead been poured into the project now known as St George’s Park, the national football centre would have been up and running for years, not still awaiting its inaugural ceremony.
So the FA have engaged Hodgson a decade late and can hardly expect to get him for £500,000 now.
But should Bernstein and Brooking have acted sooner, indeed on the February day when Capello drove away from Wembley?
Of course they should: covertly. Maybe they did. At any rate, West Brom’s season was not disrupted by speculation. Tottenham’s was.
And we can blame the FA for that only to the extent that they appear to have misled the media by portraying themselves as muddled.
Now they seem ready to appoint an excellent candidate.
Hodgson mastered international football when with Switzerland in the 1990s and only amnesia can prevent him from succeeding with his own country.
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That and the corrosive effect of the critics if it reaches the public and players: at Liverpool he was blamed for not being Kenny Dalglish and there is a risk that he will seen as the anti-Harry now.
Bernstein and Brooking are right to take it. They have favoured substance over perception and that, for the FA, is real progress.
