WHEN South Korea went home from the World Cup, after the same set of results as England’s, their players were pelted with toffees, “go eat a toffee” being a Korean insult equivalent to “screw you”. Their coach, Hong Myung-Bo, apologised to the nation, then resigned.
Italy’s Cesare Prandelli also stepped down, handing back a new contract. He wanted to “take responsibility” for early elimination. Japan’s Alberto Zaccheroni was another to apologise and quit.
Half the coaches whose teams failed at the group stage in Brazil have left their posts and Fabio Capello is no more than limping on. Russian MPs wanted him hauled before parliament and his salary halved after their first-round failure.
The point is this: Roy Hodgson has carried on as if a mild backlash is his misfortune when, in the wider football context, he may be lucky still to have his job. That is not intended as a cheap shot or a recommendation that he go, merely as perspective. There comes a point in all reigns when the story becomes the manager, not his team. And it’s generally not a happy point. Hot air won’t blow the clouds away, Roy, only performances, only results.
He has complained about the “negativity” surrounding England since the World Cup but a toiled-for, meagre home win over a mediocre Norway was never going to change the climate. He observed, sitting in the Terry Venables Room at St George’s Park on Friday, that he is not the first England manager to fall short at a tournament and be weighed down by the baggage.
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True. But the Football Association is generous when retaining managers after tournament failure and yet only Sir Bobby Robson (bouncing back after Euro 88) justified the decision to be kept on. Hodgson is like the club manager who gets relegated but stays. He has to start the next season well, rebuilding or not. The least troubling thing about Hodgson’s reaction to criticism after Norway was his swearing. So flipping what? “Listen, I’m a football coach. I played in the non-League with dockers whose every other word was a swear word. I just thought I was with mature enough people to understand a swear word — which I thought was probably used at the right time — should not provoke a fit of moral indignation,” he said.
More worrying were claims that Hodgson was terse, post-Norway, because he wanted to go and see friends and family, and the viewpoint underpinning his annoyance: that criticising England for mustering two shots on target (one a penalty) was unjust. Neither suggests a man willing to treat questioning of his team’s direction with due respect. He has given this impression since elimination in Brazil. He’s right to say that, with hindsight, people are more critical of England’s play at the finals than they were at the time. But that’s because of the bottom line: lasting two games at a World Cup is a blemish for any country, never mind one with England’s pretensions. If a two-game tournament should be treated philosophically, if a two-shots game against Norway — with one win in 12 months, against Moldova — is no cause for probing, then how low must England go before we ask questions?
Switzerland are vibrant and Hodgson said: “If anything we might be Norway on Monday. We might be pushed back and can’t attack.” He doesn’t want the game built up. “It is the first match of qualifying. We’re not preparing for a World Cup final.” Curiously, he even wanted to temper excitement about Wednesday’s bright spot, the dimension Raheem Sterling offered when recast as a No 10 in the second half.
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The problem with lowering expectations is you start living down to them. England’s ambitions must be higher than sifting for signs of progress in a historically bad World Cup campaign or a performance such as Wednesday’s. The Euro 2016 qualifying campaign looks easy and dreary and stasis feels a possibility. Positive spin on Wednesday’s record low crowd — that it compared well to other international friendlies — is froth. That 40,181 still came to Wembley was only down to the astounding loyalty of the English supporter. Leeds still get gates of 20,000 but that’s not evidence they’re in good health.
Hodgson remains a good man, with a good CV, who has earned his opportunity to rebuild. But he admits he’s thin-skinned. Current scrutiny is fair. Why, given England have more attacking talents than defensive ones, are they struggling to score? “[Against Norway] we didn’t cross the ball well enough and were a bit slow in getting shots away, allowing blocks to come in,” Hodgson said. It was good, for once, to hear him admitting flaws and identifying causes: the first step to fixing them.
It was also encouraging that he declared himself open to fresh ideas, such as starting Sterling in a midfield diamond or playing Wayne Rooney deeper, albeit “he will be playing the centre-forward position on Monday and we’ll see after that”.
Surely Hodgson needs to think about Jordan Henderson, so effective in a Liverpool system that encourages him to get ahead of the ball and use his remarkable running power to puncture opponents. Norway retreated and England kept playing in front of them. An unleashed Henderson could be a means of bursting through.
Hodgson’s international coaching career began in Switzerland and he can kick-start it there, or move further towards an endgame. He says he’s seeing improvements in England’s “defending and pressurising” and argued he’s presiding over what is still a new team. “Come Euro 2016, once they’ve played with each other for a couple of years, that’s when we’d be hoping they could lift our heads a little bit out of this gloom,” he said.
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Actually the team’s not that new. Of 15 players used against Montenegro and Poland last October, 10 are in the current squad and Chris Smalling and Kyle Walker are injured. Hodgson seemed to find something in that double-header that he has since mislaid, with England winning three games in 10 — against Norway, a moderate Denmark and Peru reserves. They throw toffee at Koreans for form like that.