YOU have to laugh at England – whose sense of self-importance is matched only by its addiction to self-destruction.
The country who gave the game to the world frequently turns in on itself whenever something goes wrong. And Saturday’s defeat in Manaus – tastefully dubbed ‘the bungle in the jungle’ by our friends in the Red Tops – highlighted once again how unmeasured the reaction is to the Three Lions and all the team symbolises.
Before each tournament, they talk themselves up – yet little time is wasted before they knock themselves down.
Already it has happened – after their 2-1 defeat by Italy – a game where England played reasonably well, and on the balance of play, were unlucky not to have drawn.
Yet balance is one thing that is forever missing from their media’s coverage. The hysterical reaction to their narrow defeat by the second most successful nation in the game’s history has left Roy Hodgson dubbed Captain Mainwaring and has depicted Everton’s left back as ‘the Baine of his life’.
Is there any wonder the first five letters of pressure is Press? Because England’s national newspapers do their national team few favours, wrongfully hyping them up before delivering stinging criticism whenever results go awry.
By now, you would have thought they would have had the team’s measure. Semi-finalists in just two tournaments since 1968, they cannot justify their status as a footballing superpower – which they may have been in the 1930s, and briefly again in 1960s.
Since then, though, they have produced the best league in the world but not the best players and Hodgson’s decision to leave two of his better ones – John Terry and Ashley Cole – at home has already backfired.
The show moves on to Sao Paulo on Thursday and then Belo Horizante next Tuesday, by which stage Hodgson will know if his reputation – and by extension his job – is safe.
As a man, he does not deserve our sympathy because any person who applies for a job where ridicule comes with the territory needs his head examined. No one forced him to do it, therefore no one should care if he gets it in the neck.
Yet the least he deserves is a level of respect. As a manager he has survived in the most treacherous profession of them all for 38 years, building his CV up in middle-ranking countries, winning league titles with Halmstad and Malmo in Sweden before performing a similar trick with Copenhagen in Denmark.
In international football, he bridged a 28-year-gap to guide Switzerland to the 1994 World Cup finals before steering them through a tough qualification route to get to the finals of Euro 96.
The work he did at Finland is admired – as are the recollections of Fulham and West Brom’s fans. But mention Liverpool and you have a serious blot on his copybook. He failed there and – in English terms – that is important because as they reflect on his 38 years in the management game, it is not with respect for what he did in Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark or Finland, but what he failed to do at Anfield.
Still the point is that he has faced down crises before and emerged as a mature master of the game. His first job – which very often is a manager’s last – saw him inherit a team that had only just survived relegation on goal difference the year before. Hodgson guided them to the title.
Celtic fans may recall how, at Neuchatal Xamax, he reacted to a 1-0 defeat in the first leg of their UEFA Cup tie in 1992, by changing formation and destroying the Glaswegans 5-1 in the second leg, earning a date with Real Madrid, who Xamax beat at home before losing out in the second leg at the Bernabeu.
When he took over at Inter – the Italian’s were bottom of Serie A. They finished seventh that season and third the next, as well as reaching that UEFA Cup final. Fulham, too, were in dire trouble when he took over at Craven Cottage in December 2007, just two points ahead of the relegation zone. They too got to Europa League final.
So – his time at Anfield aside – he has shown an ability to firefight. And that is what he has to do now in a tournament where the general athleticism and pace of the play has left us gasping in admiration on one level – and also with a degree of wonder.
Can they all really be that fit to combat the heat and humidity and play a complex game at a ferocious pace? Or is doping going on? And is it cleverly disguised?
Those are the real questions to come from the tournament so far – not whether Hodgson should have selected Ashley Cole or Luke Shaw rather than Leighton Baines.
