Euro 2012: ‘Roy Hodgson’s England will be as tough as their manager’

IN CASE you hadn’t heard, Roy Hodgson is a former teacher who speaks eight languages, reads Nobel prize-winning literature and presents a good seminar. As the new England manager prepares to lead his country into the finals of Euro 2012, it sounds suspiciously as though the knives are being sharpened again.

Already, they are asking questions about his suitability for the job. How will the man in a grey suit, the well-travelled academic who writes technical reports for UEFA, inspire the national side? How will someone who has not succeeded at one of England’s biggest clubs handle a dressing room notorious for its egos?

After the failure of Fabio Capello, the country expected an Englishman, a traditional manager who would restore spirit by returning to basics and making it fun again. Hodgson is English all right, but he ticks none of the other boxes. He is not a former player of any repute. He is not one of the lads. He is not Harry Redknapp, just as he was not Kenny Dalglish, which did for him at Liverpool. One English commentator described him as the “English Andy Roxburgh”, capable of filing a lovely technical account, but lacking the X-factor required to take England out of the ordinary.

Well, the Scottish Andy Roxburgh, UEFA’s technical director, has heard all this before, and thinks it is baloney. Since when, asks the former Scotland manager, was being a cerebral character with a cultural hinterland something to be ashamed of? How, he says, can having an exhaustive knowledge of international football, and all its tactical nuances, be worthy of derision?

“This idea that if you’re trained in some way as a coach, and can teach and communicate, it’s somehow a negative... that’s very old-fashioned,” says Roxburgh. “On the continent, it’s the complete opposite. They actually think if you don’t speak well, and you’re not bright, you’re not up to the job. Vicente del Bosque, the Spain manager, always says ‘if you only know football, you’re lost’. You need to have more about you because players have more about them today than they did 30 to 40 years ago. Players are very demanding, very knowledgable, far more knowledgable than they ever were before, about diets, football and life itself.”

Roxburgh got to know Hodgson when the latter managed Switzerland, who played Scotland in two qualifying matches for the 1994 World Cup. Roxburgh’s last game in charge of Scotland was a 1-1 draw with the Swiss at Pittodrie in September 1993. It was a disappointing end to a qualifying campaign in which the two coaches, often on the same spying trips, developed a mutual respect.

When Roxburgh became UEFA’s technical director in 1994, he invited Hodgson to be an observer for the governing body’s study group, a role he has since filled frequently, be it at the finals of a major tournament, or at high-profile Champions League matches. The irony is that, before he was appointed by the FA, Hodgson had asked Roxburgh if he could take this summer off. “When he was linked with the job, I joked with him that he could do both,” says the Scot.

Just a fortnight ago, Roxburgh took a taxi ride from the Champions League final to Munich Airport. He was in the front, alongside the driver. Hodgson was in the back, with Capello, his England predecessor. Roxburgh is not one for eavesdropping, but he must have been curious as to the content of that conversation.

Less than six weeks before the finals, Hodgson inherited from Capello an over-rated squad that has been further depleted by injuries and suspension. Wayne Rooney will miss the first two games, while Frank Lampard and Gareth Barry have been ruled out, leaving England with a midfield crisis exacerbated by doubts surrounding the fitness of Scott Parker.

The 64-year-old will need all of his experience to paper over the cracks. While much of his CV falls into the journeyman category, and the Liverpool failure counts against him, his work with Fulham and West Bromwich Albion was impressive, and he knows foreign football inside out. Quite apart from a peripatetic club career that took him everywhere from Sweden and Norway to England and Italy, the Switzerland side that he led to the knockout stages of the 1994 World Cup finals reached third in the FIFA rankings.

“It’s not ideal that he has been rushed into the job, that he hasn’t been in charge for any of the qualifying matches, but he is not inexperienced,” says Roxburgh. “If it was someone who had never done it before, you could have raised a question mark and wondered how they would cope. You can have all the qualifying matches you like, but nothing prepares you for the experience of a major finals.”

Hodgson, though, has yet to prove himself with a team of big names. However impossible his job was at Liverpool, there were whispers of unrest among the players, who wearied of his repetitive drills. In two spells with Internazionale, he had relatively few stars to handle, with the exception of Roberto Carlos. The Brazilian left the club after a disagreement with his English manager.

Roxburgh insists that Hodgson is not to be taken lightly. “Just because he is articulate and can communicate well, doesn’t mean he is not tough. Roy is as tough as nails. He has an inner core of hardness. He makes tough decisions and he has no qualms about doing it. Roy came from a tough area of London. He can handle himself all right. They won’t mess him around.”

According to Roxburgh, the main feature of England under Hodgson will be their organisation, especially at the back. He thinks that Ukraine, Sweden and France, their Group D opponents, will find them difficult to break down.

Who knows? In the absence of the expectation that so often weighs England down, they might even surprise a few people. Roxburgh says that the 16 coaches involved in the forthcoming finals agreed during a recent UEFA meeting that as many as ten countries were capable of winning it. “A lot of teams will think they have a chance. Although they won’t say it publicly, I’m quite certain England fall into that category.”