As Theresa May has been at pains to stress: Allardyce means Allardyce. There will be no backsliding, no attempts to weasel out of the full implications of the Football Association’s decision, however unhappy or depressed with it some people may be. The FA clearly signalled its intentions with Big Sam’s appointment to the big job, and his predictable tendency to lump along with the status quo must be delivered upon. Indeed, following the naming of his first squad for Sunday’s World Cup qualifier against Slovakia, that task appears to already be well under way. Wayne Rooney remains captain, in the No10 role. Furthermore, both Rooney and Allardyce – and the kindly Manchester United boss, José Mourinho, – believe United’s Marcus Rashford will be much happier in the Under-21s.
These days, we know that any England manager is essentially managing decline. That was clear with the appointment of Roy Hodgson over Harry Redknapp. With Harry, there would have been hope. Totally misplaced hope – but hope nonetheless. And we can’t be doing with hope as far as the England football team are concerned. As the John Cleese character in Clockwise so rightly observes: “It’s not the despair … I can stand the despair. It’s the hope.”
There was no such baggage with Roy. It made perfect sense that he had previously managed Switzerland, a nation with whom we would do well to accept footballing parity. The Hodgson appointment, I reflected at the time, was a timely acceptance that England belonged in the twilight home of international football (we had long belonged in the twilight home of international politics). We’d had a good innings, but it was high time to have a rug tucked round our knees and settle down to a nice game of draughts with Switzerland.
If appointing Hodgson was the equivalent of voluntarily giving up our seat on the UN security council on the basis that we obviously hadn’t been a world power for yonks, Allardyce seemed to be the perfect continuity successor. The Big Sam appointment was the equivalent of saying: “Yes, we finally accept that we wouldn’t be allowed to use our nuclear weapons unless the Americans ordered us to, and that is why we are unilaterally disarming.” I had a lot of time for it.
Unfortunately, there seems to be some raging against the dying of the light in the more obscure reaches of the Wembley executive suite. This time last year, we learned that 100 FA staff were to lose their jobs in a restructuring and reprioritising exercise. The FA chief executive, Martin Glenn, spoke of “the ultimate ambition of resourcing our elite England teams to give them the best chance of success at tournaments”. Strong words, and almost decipherable.
Perhaps more flesh has now been put on their bones by Allardyce, who used his press conference this week to reveal the existence of an intriguing-sounding FA department. Its job: sourcing foreign players who might be eligible to play for England. “We have a department to look at the whole situation,” he declared, “in all areas for every [age range] international team.” All the other sports do it, he said, and all the other countries. “We all know the shortage of English players in the Premier League,” Allardyce observed. “I think it is only 31%. If those don’t play on a regular basis and there is another option then, surely, if we are going to win something and that player is of the calibre to force his way into the side, we give him an opportunity.”
Aha. Having tried the foreign manager approach, we will be now trialling the foreign player approach. At some level, you have to admire the front of the FA, which has spent years whingeing about the problem of the shortage of English players in the Premier League. Still, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
Even so, I can’t help thinking there could be no more auto-satirical department at this stage of Britain’s post-imperial journey than one dedicated to confecting Englishmen. Ironywise, it ranks alongside Nigel Farage’s solution to the problem of Britain not having any qualified trade negotiators to handle Brexit. “I’m told we haven’t got the skills,” Nigel conceded. “So let’s headhunt them. Let’s get them from Singapore, from Asia …” Or, you know … Europe? They’ve got loads there.
Whether they’ve got any talented youngsters who’d rather play for us than some other European country is unclear – perhaps, like Adnan Januzaj, they’d rather play for Belgium or even Kosovo. It’s almost as if people no longer take as gospel the words of cuddly old Cecil Rhodes: “Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life.” Remember that you are an Englishman, and will consequently go out in the last 16. You might want to try Iceland or something instead.
Anyway, Big Sam is pretty sure that it won’t matter so much when the pretend English chap propels us to triumph. “It’s a very difficult, very delicate subject. I’ll have to see if I actually do it one day how it’s perceived across the nation. If the player goes out and scores the winner, will it be quite that bad?”
Answers to the FA’s department of international outreach, please.
