A Modest Proposal For the English FA.

By AM Wednesday, May 9, 2012

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There is a measure of consistency to the English national soccer team. The FA coach selectors having determined that the team will win nothing have selected a new coach who will ensure that there will be no pleasant surprises along the way. At least in these days of austerity something has to be sacrificed so why not the hefty fee certain to be incurred were the FA to buy Harry Redknapp of Spurs out of his current contract?

Not that Hodgson is a bad manager. He has been in charge of 18 clubs in a career spanning three and a half decades. But when presented with a real challenge, some might say an impossible one - making a silk purse out of the sow’s ear that is Liverpool FC - he failed, and was forced to walk the plank mid season. Who was the last Liverpool coach that happened to?  Redknapp may have fared no better had he took the reins at Anfield but the fact is he didn’t and therefore was not tested and found out.

Without much difficulty the English FA could have cast its net a bit wider. It could after all have found a foreigner quite at ease working for the English. And given that Mary Lou McDonald has suggested an interest in his current job – she is still alive and visible for all her cheek in daring to be so preposterous – Sinn Fein president Percy Pompous might just be the man for the England post. He may not know much about soccer but ignorance is not a bar he won't try to jump. He knows little about economics and that has not deterred him from offering economic advice as to how Ireland’s economy should be managed. Nor has it prompted him to desist from chiding, dear boy, those who differ with his view. Alright, Michael McDowell once destroyed him on live TV on the matter of economics but that should not rule him out applying for the England job. Jogi Löw did something similar to Fabio Capello on camera in full view of hundreds of millions during the last world Cup. The Italian stayed in his job.

President Pompous would make a really fine manager if managing defeat is what the English FA, as it seems, has in mind. Arriving equipped with much experience in under achievement he would certainly ensure that England’s record of having won nothing in almost 50 years would remain intact. He   could even apply the logic of the peace process to matches and claim a victory or at worst a draw each time England got stuffed. But perhaps best of all he would do the lot for the average industrial wage. That would make him considerably cheaper than Hodgson.

Then he could return to Ireland and sell it to the sheeple that he sabotaged the England team; that he was responsible for the failures they achieved.  And it would be bought. Victory parades through West Belfast to celebrate year another great victory in a new phase of struggle carried out in a different arena of conflict.

Win-win all round. Not often we see that in soccer.