Roy Hodgson has Ray Lewington there to keep it jolly.
He hired 39-year old Gary Neville for his nous.
All three are uncomplicated guys who can talk and joke with the players.
So Engerland is much more English now.
Two Swedes would have been OK if Sven had been a great coach.
The last manager had a big posse of foreigners with him. Fabio Capello was actually five Italians, since he insisted on bringing four assistants and they all stupidly believed we could do retiro, a family-styled training camp, which bored and demoralised the players in South Africa.
Before England\’s last game in Euro 2012, I saw a bit of pre-match coverage on Sky Sports News and Nick Collins was talking with Martin Tyler, who had arrived in Ukraine two days previously.
Martin said Roy Hodgson looks as if he\’s exactly right for the job and he had handled some delicate issues beautifully in the two press conferences he\’d seen.
Five weeks ago, roughly, I chucked a lot of junk out of my office, found an old magazine with Ian Wright on the cover and thought : Why did I keep Satellite Times?
The strapline was England versus Italy : Can Glenn Hoddle succeed where others have failed?
The date was October 1997 and I eventually twigged that I’d kept the magazine because I\’d written a preview of the big match in Rome, where England needed a draw to qualify for France 98.
In that article, before I knew what the internet was, I noted that Glenn Hoddle had won 10 of his first 12 games and that England had not drawn in those 12 games.
I also wrote this:
Cesare Maldini, now under a lot of pressure to beat England again, was angered by what we did in Le Tournoi in France. He took the match seriously enough to pick ten of the eleven players who faced us at Wembley but the players themselves were not psyched up. And Maldini Sr. thought some of the England tackles were far too fierce for a friendly match.
Managing England is a very testing, frustrating, lonely job, one which few coaches would want and even fewer are qualified for. At the moment nobody else in the country could do the job, except maybe Roy Hodgson, so I hope Glenn Hoddle is England coach for the next eight years.
Not surprisingly, I don\’t remember writing except maybe Roy Hodgson, but at least I was aware of his qualities as far back as 1997, when he was at Blackburn.
England drew 0-0 in Rome, a considerable tactical victory, but Hoddle only managed England for 27 games, five more than Venables, who preceded him.
Sven got 67.
We don\’t know how many games Roy Hodgson will get.
But I wish him luck against Italy tonight.
It\’s his sixth game in charge.