They think highly of Brendan Rodgers at Liverpool. So highly, in fact, that when they saw television pictures from Uefa’s latest Elite Club Coaches Forum this week, they asked him why he was not there.
Rodgers shrugged and said it was the first he had heard about it. Surely some mistake, they thought, and inquiries were made as to whether an email or a letter had been missed, but no, there had been no invitation. Rodgers, it should be said, is only 41 and is yet to manage in the Champions League or win a leading trophy, but then there were several younger coaches there, of whom Luis Enrique, Filippo Inzaghi and Nuno Espírito Santo do not boast Champions League or trophy-winning experience either. Indeed, Inzaghi’s Serie A management career started only last Sunday with his first game in charge of AC Milan.
By the sounds of things, the Liverpool manager did not miss much. The write-up on the Uefa website gave the impression that the conclusions drawn were more about the quality of modern pitches than about the evolution of tactics.
Still, those are the circles in which Rodgers aspires to move, among Europe football’s intelligentsia — José Mourinho, Arsène Wenger, Pep Guardiola and Sir Alex Ferguson, who chairs these meetings as Uefa’s coaching ambassador.
Nobody should underestimate how difficult it is to climb from near the bottom of the coaching ladder, as a coach of Reading’s under-11 team, while working as the club’s youth welfare officer, to preparing to lead Liverpool into the Champions League. It has been an extraordinary rise and now some are talking of him as the ideal successor to Roy Hodgson as England manager, to which the obvious response is: “Why would he want to go and do a silly thing like that?”
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English football could badly do with some fresh ideas, youthful energy, a more positive outlook and a clearly defined philosophy, across all age groups, rather than the staid attitudes of the past decade and more. How wonderful it would be to see English players performing well as Jordan Henderson, Raheem Sterling and Daniel Sturridge do for Liverpool in a fluent, flexible system. It is just that, unfortunately for the FA — and we are talking long term, rather than about any speculation involving Hodgson’s position in the short term — the notion of enticing the next England manager from Liverpool or any other leading club would seem almost laughable.
Every England manager — or at least every English manager of the national team — tells us that the job represents the pinnacle of his profession. Perhaps it would even have felt so for Brian Clough had he got the job in 1977 or 1982, but apart from when the FA have thrown huge contracts at Sven-Göran Eriksson and Fabio Capello, the past few decades have seen England managers recruited from clubs including West Ham United, Ipswich Town, Aston Villa, (pre-Abramovich) Chelsea, Fulham, Middlesbrough and West Bromwich Albion.
I remain convinced that Mourinho’s post-Chelsea flirtation with the job in 2007 was precisely that. The recent trends of the Premier League era are entirely at odds with this idealistic notion that the England job is the pinnacle of a British manager’s ambition.
Rodgers comes from a different corner of the British Isles, but he is also from a different generation to Hodgson or Harry Redknapp. He is global in his outlook — far more so, football-wise, than the well travelled Hodgson. To imagine that he would see the England job as the pinnacle of his ambitions, while managing Liverpool, is a little unrealistic. After all, when did an England manager last leave office with his reputation intact, never mind enhanced? Terry Venables in 1996 or Bobby Robson six years earlier, the latter after being battered along the way. It would be interesting to know how Rodgers sees his career unfolding. The expectation is that he is at Liverpool for the long haul, but he would never be short of options. Towards the end of the 2012-13 season, when not all were convinced by the direction he was taking at Anfield, Rodgers was discussed by Manchester City as a possible candidate to succeed Roberto Mancini. The job went to Manuel Pellegrini, but City felt, as Liverpool had, that Rodgers’s philosophy (that word again) matched their own. Last spring there were whispers about interest from Barcelona. It came to naught, but it spoke of the esteem in which his work with Liverpool is held.
In that appealing, evangelical way of his, Rodgers has said that his “methods and ideas are a fusion between British mentality and European ways of working” and that “my life’s work is trying to show that British players can play”. These are the kind of statements — backed up, crucially, by evidence on the pitch — that should send hearts aflutter at the FA, but, frankly, it would seem that this boat has sailed. Why would the young, ambitious manager of a resurgent Liverpool, with a long career ahead of him, even begin to consider drinking from the FA’s poisoned chalice?
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Similar might be said of Roberto Martínez, Spanish but a confirmed Anglophile. For all the same reasons as Rodgers, he would be an appealing fit, vision-wise, and, as such, the only type of overseas candidate that the FA should entertain after the unsuccessful short-term fixes of Eriksson and Capello. But would Martínez really leave Everton for the England job? If it was the best job available, possibly, providing he felt he had taken the Merseyside club as far as he could, but might not Arsenal, when Wenger leaves, or indeed Manchester United or City or one of the top Spanish clubs seem a more obvious, more appealing next step?
When the time comes to replace Hodgson, whose regime looks tired after two years, the FA will presumably be aiming for Rodgers-type or Martínez-type candidates — progressive younger coaches capable of breathing new life into an ailing set-up — and they would have a duty at least to try to go after them. It is just that the FA is likely to be disappointed. Whether Uefa considers him an elite coach or not, Rodgers, albeit still with much to learn and prove, is heading for the A-list. That brief window of opportunity, when he might have been tempted by England, has almost certainly been and gone.
Calls to drop Rooney back are questionable
Paul Scholes is the latest to propose that Wayne Rooney’s future lies in midfield — perhaps even as soon as Monday, when England take on Switzerland in Basle in their opening Euro 2016 qualifying match. According to his former Manchester United team-mate, Rooney “is the best passer in the team and can play that midfield role better than anyone”.
Rooney, surprisingly, made a similar suggestion this week, saying that he expects to drop back into midfield towards the end of his career, but I don’t see it. Rooney has played in midfield before, notably to his chagrin in Sir Alex Ferguson’s final season at United, and rarely looked as well suited to it as his obvious all-round attributes suggest he would be.
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As for Rooney’s suggestion that he might drop back into a deeper role “when I’m a bit older, losing my legs a bit”, it seems to underestimate the physical and tactical demands of any such adjustment. Midfield players need “legs” and unless a player is supremely adaptable — as English players tend not to be, in part because, unlike the Dutch, they are not coached that way from a young age — parachuting them into a new position towards the end of their career seldom works.
6 With no specialist right back in the England squad, either John Stones or Phil Jones will play there against Switzerland on Monday. Whatever their potential in central defence, this is risky. If Roy Hodgson’s commitment is to 4-4-2, then surely James Milner would be the best choice on the right-hand side of midfield, providing greater cover for whichever of Stones or Jones appears at right back.
6 Bored by the international break? Filled with dread at the thought of a weekend without Premier League football? Well, it is Non-League Day. Consider popping down to your local non-league team to show some support and see what they have to offer. Confession: I will not be participating today, determined to enjoy a Saturday off with the family before I head to Switzerland tomorrow, but a recent visit to The Shay to watch FC Halifax Town only increased my enthusiasm for Non-League Day. Find your nearest non-league fixture here.