Tomorrow (Thursday, 4th May), the English FA is expected to announce Steve McClaren as the next England manager. The man has been talked about as Eriksson’s successor long before Sven was politely asked to shove it leave, and he has topped the list of potential English managers.
Problem is, if this is where the FA were heading all along, why the public embarrassment over Hiddink and Scolari?
The more one thinks about it, the easier it seems to toe the media line and flame the FA management. Brian Barwick, being the FA chief executive has been blamed the most along with David Dein but the truth is that the FA got it wrong from the word go. Nationalism won out over pragmatism, and no one realised that unless you can pry Sir Alex Ferguson away from Manchester United (another season like this and you just might be able to), there is no good enough “British” manager available to them.
For the good of the country, they would have to go out of England. Unfortunately, the English are too proud to see it.
To top it all off, they’ve even gone for an old-Empire style management dynasty, where several managers will work together as part of England’s management setup (this is speculation still, and a scary one at that). If the inexperience of McClaren was not enough, we’ve got Curbishley, Allardyce and Stuart Pearce (the one good man out of the lot) as potential assistants…
Too many managers messing up the team?
All in all, I’m hoping they completely make a fool out of the media and pull a rabbit (i.e. a big-name manager) out of their floppy hats, but that’s too much optimism for me to handle, especially where English football is concerned.
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