They Think They'll Manage

Played one, lost one. No, it's not the bald statistics of Foul Play's recent unsuccessful foray into the world of badminton, but the statistically exemplary record that Howard Wilkinson seems destined to leave the England job with, following "his" team's horror-show against France at Wembley last week.

Another day, those of us who usually enjoy deriding England's less brilliant performances might have been tempted to indulge in a generous bout of schadenfreude while Nicolas Anelka was displaying far better finishing skills than he usually does for his club. But, in truth, most of us were too gobsmacked by what we saw in that second half to do anything but stare admiringly at Les Bleus. On the admittedly few occasions that England get truly wellied, it doesn't tend to happen at Wembley.

Now Wilkinson is all but dead in the water as a managerial candidate, and the talk is of parachuting in Kevin Keegan for the Poland game on March 27 as a temporary measure. The idea is that Keegan, never the greatest tactical genius in the world, will pump up the players emotionally for one big effort to sweep aside this mediocre but improving Polish side, in the process keeping England alive in the Euro 2000 qualifiers. Then the FA will stop dithering and appoint a proper manager.

What fun the English press would have with Keegan as England boss on a permanent basis, with his mixed metaphors, his frequent commentating gaffes, and his ever-present air of psychological turmoil. They left him relatively alone when he was at Newcastle, but would have no compunction about serving him up as a back-page Sunday roast at the merest sign of a 0-0 draw at home to Bulgaria.

Then again, they'd do it to anybody. Stories abound of the Harry Harrises and Brian Woolnoughs of this world celebrating jubilantly in the Råsunda Stadion press box when Johan Mjällby put Sweden 2-1 up against Hoddle's men last September. In the minds of these utter bastards, it makes for much better copy (not to mention better craic) if England lose, even though the feelgood factor ensures higher tabloid newspaper sales when they win important matches.

Right now they're all at sea as they jockey for position, trying to decide which man to support for the job and seeing which one has the longest coat-tails. Terry Venables, unsurprisingly, is the favoured candidate of most of them, though if we were to assess his merits on empirical evidence, he wouldn't really be in the running.

Why? Well, results-wise, England are in the same boat that the Republic of Ireland frequently found themselves in during the Charlton years. Liam Mackey once pointed out that while Jack's Army always sang "You'll Never Beat The Irish" with justifiable conviction, they could just as easily have sung "You'll Rarely Lose To The Irish" without danger of being contradicted.

Like Ireland once were, England are one of the more frequent "draw-ers" in European football. The best teams they've beaten in competition since Italia '90 have been Holland and Scotland, both at Euro '96. After that, at a push, you're looking at facile victories over Poland, Georgia and Colombia. Their record is speckled all over with draws against illustrious opponents—Italy, Germany, Spain, Argentina—but precious few wins. Under the right laboratory conditions (i.e. playing at home with their tails up), they can be formidable, but when removed from this context, they are frequently found wanting.

As a result, virtually all the pro-Venables stuff in the media is based on the less-than-compelling statistic of two wins and three draws from five home fixtures in Euro '96. When English fans think of Venables, they think not of his Australian World Cup disappointment but of Sheringham laying on timeless goals for Shearer, summer evenings spent waving St. George flags at Wembley, and 'Three Lions'.

The uniqueness of Venables' reign as England manager lay in the fact that 80% of his team's fixtures were Euro '96 warm-ups, of which many were dire. He never had to marshall his troops for pressure encounters in godforsaken hellholes like Poland or Moldova, and his nod-and-a-wink cooperation with the press meant that he was never harangued over matters of team selection. And because the vast majority of his matches in charge were friendlies, usually it didn't matter a damn who he picked anyway.

But at least Venables wasn't a Jesus freak. By the time Glenn Hoddle went, some of us were half-expecting the guy's farewell press conference to feature a speech extolling the holistic virtues of slaughtering goats in candlelit pentagrams. The difference is that Venables could handle the press. Hoddle provoked them.

As the FA survey the wreckage of the France debacle, Foul Play can reassure them that the right man is out there. A man who, unlike Terry Venables, has actually won the European Championship in his time (though you wouldn't have known it from the ensuing press coverage); a man present at six World Cups as player and manager; and a man renowned for getting the best out of often limited players.

He won 96 caps as a world-class full-back for his country; he is universally respected as one of the game's most successful coaches and tacticians; and, best of all, he's been out of work since last October. Berti Vogts . . . come on down!

Hey, just a thought.