Roy Hodgson has insisted that Jamie Vardy is the victim of an injustice and should not be castigated for the “human” reaction to being sent off that has left the Leicester City striker facing an extended ban from the Football Association.
Vardy is facing an additional one-game suspension because of his finger-jabbing tirade in the face of the referee, Jon Moss, after being shown a second yellow card, for alleged diving, in Leicester’s 2-2 draw against West Ham on Sunday. The England international has been charged with improper conduct but Hodgson, the FA’s highest-profile employee, said he feels sorry for the player.
“I sympathise with him,” Hodgson said. “I think he was very, very unlucky and I will go out on a limb – I don’t see that as a dive. I think he was unbalanced and that was it. I don’t think it was a penalty either. I just think he was unbalanced, running at that speed and there was a very slight contact with the defender who was trying to cover.
“I think he went down because he was unbalanced but, of course, all the pundits I hear are saying: ‘He was trying to dive, look how he dived.’ I don’t see it and I wouldn’t blame him for that. I don’t think he did go down. It’s not in his make-up.
“When you get sent off for something like that – where he obviously feels like I feel, and there is no doubt he is of that opinion – he has had to swallow the fact that he has been made to leave the field. Then, of course, he has reacted like sometimes human beings react. He hasn’t just said to the ref: ‘That’s all right, I understand, shake hands and have a good game.’ He has called him a few names. But he is a human being and that can happen.
“Players are players. You take everything that the player brings with him. You take Wayne Rooney – he, in my recollection, was pretty hot-headed earlier in his career and got himself into scrapes on the field. But you take what the player brings.”
Hodgson’s comments might not be in line with the stance his employer wants to take when it comes to protecting referees, but the England manager does intend to speak to his players about the importance of discipline at Euro 2016.
All 24 managers held a workshop with Pierluigi Collina from the Uefa referees’ committee in Paris last month and a delegation of tournament officials will speak to the squad in the buildup. England’s representatives, Martin Atkinson and Mark Clattenburg, will not officiate at any of the England team’s matches and Hodgson, speaking at an England media briefing, said it would “make logistic sense” for them to be involved.
After a staunch defence of Vardy, Hodgson was asked whether he still wants the Leicester player and team-mates such as Wayne Rooney and Dele Alli to “have a bit of devil” in the tournament. “One of the accusations after we lost to Uruguay [in the World Cup] was that we were told England weren’t streetwise enough,” Hodgson said. “That’s another interesting topic because how do you make people streetwise if they don’t grow up on the street? We’re English. We’re brought up in England, English schools, English culture and English parents. We’re not from the back streets of Uruguay or Colombia so I don’t know what you can do as a coach to make them suddenly that way.
“The same applies here [Euro 2016] obviously. Our players will know that discipline is very important. Our players will have it drummed into them that they must keep their cool and ‘Don’t lose your temper, don’t run the risk that they are going to upset you and get you sent off’. We tell them all those things. But what if it happens anyway?
“People make it sound so simple that all I have to do is go round to every player and give them a lecture: ‘Listen boys, we don’t want anything like this happening, just imagine it’s the 89th minute and you get sent off, look what would happen to us.’ They would all nod very wisely, none of them would disagree and they would all say: ‘Don’t worry, we won’t do it, you’re right.’ But then it still happens. I think our discipline record over the last few years has been pretty good. I think it will remain good, but I can’t guarantee you Vardy, Rooney or Alli, or anyone else for that matter, is not going to do that.”
Hodgson, who has been encouraged by Jack Wilshere’s involvement with the Arsenal Under-21s, is out of contract at the end of this summer’s tournament but reiterated that he would like to stay in charge and said his work should not be judged on how England play in France.
“If they [the FA] want me, it is as simple as that,” he said. “I have said all along that if the FA want me, and the mood in the country is that they would like me to stay, then I am, of course, more than happy to stay. But I don’t want to be clawing on to a job when I get the feeling that people don’t want me. I suppose that comes down to what the Euros brings and how people feel after it.”
To the question of what would constitute success and persuade the FA to offer him a new contract, he added: “You are asking me to go along with something I don’t believe in. I think that jobs of high importance should be decided on competence, and not on a lucky win or an unlucky defeat. Tournaments have an element of a lottery about them. We might play well and have bad results. We might play badly – the team might look like a disaster – and sneak through. I can’t really relate to how people make those sort of decisions on that basis.
“You will say: ‘That’s the way it is, that’s the way it goes,’ and I understand that. But you cannot get me to put my name to it because if I were running a football club I would not be choosing a coach purely on the basis of ‘I’ll take this fella because he has won the last five games’, knowing full well he wasn’t very good. Or ‘I am going to dismiss this fella because he has lost five games’, knowing he was a very good manager. But that is not my decision – it will be the decision for the FA – and everything really depends on the night.
“It is a bit like rehearsals for a play. The rehearsals might have been fantastic, but on the opening night everyone forgets their lines or the play, in some others ways, is a disaster. That is where all the judgment is. I don’t think that the team and the group of players we have now will, in any way, let myself, the coaching staff or the country down. I fully believe they will go there and perform at the level we think they can. But I don’t know about refereeing decisions. I don’t know if Dele Alli’s going to chip over or hit the post when he has just dribbled past four players. I don’t know those type of things.”
