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It
appears that we are about to hurl ourselves into one of those prolonged
bouts of navel gazing that the English do better than anybody else.
What is the national team for, how should it play, and does it matter
as long as they win?
It’s an issue we’ve wrestled with, on and off, since Mexico
’70, when our brief hold on world supremacy was dragged from
us by brilliant Brazilians and ergonomic Germans. Which was the
way ahead?
Ruthless efficiency or a reliance on unfettered genius?
Sir Alf Ramsey, then England coach, was never going to give flair
its head, especially as industry, effort and application had, more
than anything, delivered the World Cup in 1966. By 1970, flair was
represented by the “long haired layabouts”, the playboys,
the me who could drop the ball onto a sixpence from 60 yards but
who wouldn’t run six feet to get a tackle in – Marsh,
Osgood, Hudson, Worthington.
They were all left to wither on the vine as Ramsey went for the
more prosaic abilities of Storey or Madeley instead, but with little
success – defeat at the hands of West Germany in the quarter-finals
of the forerunner of the European Championships in 1972 and failure
to qualify for the 1974 World Cup finished Sir Alf.
Yet such was the approbation heaped on Alf’s noble noggin,
successive England managers, most notably Don Revie, were paralysed
by the fear of defeat. An England loss would have the press demanding
you spend a healthy stretch in the Tower of London, followed by
ritual disembowelment.
Little wonder that pragmatism took hold. That approach reached its
nadir under Graham Taylor, the FA selecting a man who had taken
Watford from the bottom of the league ladder to very near its pinnacle
by a slavish adherence to playing the percentages - hitting it long,
winning corners, running the channels, passing as little as possible.
Yet once Taylor took charge, the press demanded that England move
into the 20th century and play a more sophisticated brand of the
game, harness the genius of Gascoigne to the sharpness of Lineker
then the strength of Shearer as the best way of winning games –
the beautiful game was suddenly back. Taylor was many things, including
a rigorously thorough professional. But he was never beautiful.
And now we turn full circle. Some insist that only Sam Allardyce
has the qualifications to be the next England manager, pointing
the way in which he has made Bolton a fixture in the top half of
the Premier League. Others talk about him as a latterday Taylor,
promoter of the ugliest of ugly football.
They have a point, for Allardyce has turned football into something
of a science, a science that revolves around those very long bal
percentages that made Taylor’s Watford and Gould’s Wimbledon
so hard to handle.
But to his credit, Allardyce has continued the evolution of that
style. He employs psychologists, nutritionists, specialist trainers,
computer analysis and every other modern day wrinkle that he believes
will give him an advantage over the competition. And given the shoestring
budget that Bolton are forced to work on compared even with Liverpool,
Spurs and Newcastle, never mind the real elite, Big Sam has worked
a modern day miracle.
In fact, the England manager that Sam most resembles is not Taylor.
It’s Don Revie. Allardyce is the ultimate professional, for
good and bad. Preparation is thorough to the point of fetish. Players
know what they have to do and the consequences of not doing it.
Bolton
mix moments of real invention from the likes of Okocha with some
of the sourest of time wasting, diving, rule bending tactics. And
like Revie and Leeds, Sam and Bolton are finding that it’s
the mud that really sticks. Bolton have actually played some neat
football this year, but that’s been disguised by the reputation
they’ve built for themselves by some of their more cynical
and robust football over the last few years.
Thanks to that, it appears Big Sam won’t get his England chance.
Thankfully.
I don’t buy into the idea that football like that can succeed
at international level, not consistently anyway. Yes, the smaller
nations can make life incredibly hard or the big boys by organising,
by discipline, by tactical rigidity, placing a straitjacket over
the game and trying to suffocate the life out of it.
But that’s all the more reason why nations with a Ronaldinho,
a Rooney, a Totti, an Henry, should place ever more reliance on
the magicians, because these are the Houdinis of modern football,
the men that can squirm their way out of the concrete lined box
moored at the bottom of the ocean, that can come up smiling through
incredible sleight of hand, through genius, through trickery.
Yes, all teams need shape, discipline, tactics, but great teams,
teams that win the World Cup, need to fire dreams as well as goals.
Genius, majesty, moments to marvel, those are the legacies they
truly leave and for all that Sam and Bolton are modern, noisy and
effective, can you remember anything they’ve done this season?
If the FA appoint Allardyce – or Martin O’Neill for that
matter, a hugely overrated coach who “did a Bolton” with
Leicester then occasionally won a two team league with Celtic –
they are admitting that we aspire to being Greece ’04 rather
than France ’00 or even Brazil ‘70, a dismal surrender.
Expect it to happen any day now…
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