Is it a wise move though? The truth is no one knows, and much rests on the gods of fate.
Hodgson has one big thing going for him – he has actually managed at international level before, unlike almost any other manager in England’s history. He has also won far more than Redknapp during his career. On the other hand, the players seemed to want Redknapp. And he appeared to want them, at least going by his pronouncements whenever asked that “yeah, I wouldn’t mind the England job.”
Any criticism for disrupting Tottenham with the innuendo about Redknapp and the vacant post should be ignored. It is pertinent to say that the Tottenham manager is fond of talking up other team’s players in the press, so for him to be on the receiving end was simply an ironic coincidence of justice. But Redknapp is a good manager. The question is, better than Hodgson for the England post?
On one hand yes. Redknapp does not over complicate the game, and that seems to be the style we need with a group of players who seemed reticent to accept tactical instructions too complicated from Fabio Capello. Redknapp is also a manager who has proven himself able to get the very best out of players.
Then again, Redknapp has won very, very little in his career. An FA Cup with Portsmouth is about it. Conversely, Hodgson has claimed numerous league titles across Europe, taken Fulham and Inter Milan to UEFA/Europa Cup finals, and delivered Switzerland to the 1994 World Cup and 1996 European Championship.
He is a man who knows what he is doing; who is methodical and well liked. He is a rarity; an England manager with experience of international football before taking the national team job. And an English manager with experience of the international club game. He has coached in Switzerland, Italy, Portugal and Sweden. He knows the world game, he understands tournament football, he understands international football.
The four men charged with appointing Capello’s replacement – David Bernstein, Alex Horne, Sir Trevor Brooking and Adrian Bevington – seem sold, and it is understandable why, looking at his credentials. The truth is though, that the international manager’s job is one poisoned with the potential misfortune of a bad run. Luck plays a pervasive influence at international level, and for something small to go wrong it could turn the media against him. “Woy,” affectionally referred to by some, is too nice a man surely to be portrayed as a turnip, as one predecessor was, but then you can put nothing past the English media.
Players at Liverpool did not take to his methods, and Chelsea players this year were similarly reluctant to accept the methods of Andre Villas Boas. Then there was the evidence of the Capello reign. English players can be rather difficult to manage unless pampered, unless it is Sir Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger, men who have been in charge of their teams for seemingly an age. Hodgson would not deserve the fate that befell him at Liverpool again, but he showed them up recently at Anfield. He is too nice, and also too intelligent and good a manager, to be made into a vegetable for the amusement of the English media.
