Roy Hodgson could provide the solution to England's identity crisis
As England threatens to lurch from scientific foreigner to tub-thumping patriot, Hodgson is the only candidate to offer the best of both words
The quotes write themselves. "He treats us like grown-ups." "He's put a smile back on our faces." When the FA eventually gets around to replacing Fabio Capello, those words, or something very like them, are likely to be the first uttered after the players emerge from their initial exposure to the new man's methods, with the undisguised suggestion that it was the last fellow's personality that was the problem all along, rather than the intrinsic quality of the squad at his disposal.
And when the man who put the smile back on their faces and gave them the key to the drinks cabinet is gone, his replacement will be welcomed with praise for his rigour, his iron discipline, his refusal to indulge a bunch of overpaid superstars, Until he, too, finds the task too great.
The business of appointing England managers is a drama as formal as a Noh play. When one method is perceived to have failed, there is a reflexive swing to the opposite extreme. In this the FA is encouraged and even led by the fans, who perceive in every defeat the failure of an entire set of values. A scientific foreigner is followed by a flag-waving Englishman, and then by a foreigner again. And so on.
One reason for this bipolar behaviour is the lack of a system for appointing managers within the FA. The age-group teams have their coaches, but little consideration is given to the possibility that a suitable candidate may rise up through the ranks to take control of the senior squad.
Continuity gives the comforting impression of a governing body in control of its own affairs. Sometimes it comes up with the right result, but not always. It was the principle through which Germany appointed Jupp Derwall to succeed Helmut Schön in 1978 and Berti Vogts to take over from Franz Beckenbauer 12 years later; all of them won major trophies, but the Mannschaft are now successfully in the hands of an incomer, Joachim Löw. A similar preference for long-term planning and in-house promotion carried France to the World Cup in 1998 with Aimé Jacquet and to the European championship two years later with his former assistant, Roger Lemerre. But this summer, with Raymond Domenech, the system broke down.
When the FA appointed Steve McClaren, Sven-Goran Eriksson's assistant, four years ago, it hoped to secure the benefits of continuity with the added ingredient of an Englishman's natural patriotic fervour. But the man and the moment were wrong, temporarily discrediting the idea of promoting a locally produced coach who had achieved decent results with an unfashionable club.
That formula may now be back in the minds of those FA men who control the national team's affairs, assuming they are of a mind to end their relationship with Capello. But if they want Roy Hodgson to replace the Italian, they had better hurry up. The 62-year-old Fulham manager is so much the flavour of the summer that it was a surprise he did not turn up at Glastonbury to introduce Shakira.
It seems that the power-brokers at Liverpool, having taken a few weeks to reflect on the next step after the dismissal of Rafael Benítez, are also keen to see Hodgson, who may even be installed at Anfield by Thursday, according to some reports. It would seem a perfect appointment. But then Hodgson currently looks like the perfect appointment to every vacancy in English football, particularly to the one that may or may not soon involve the national side.
His CV is an impressive one - if no match for Eriksson's or Capello's - and he has just finished a season in which he took Fulham, a club held in widespread affection, to the final of the Europa League. But there is more to it than that. What Hodgson represents, at this particular moment, is a yearning for a return to older values - in Liverpool's case those of the legendary Boot Room, in England's those of Alf Ramsey and Bobby Robson.
He is a football man, in the wonderfully plain phrase used by Arthur Hopcraft, once of this newspaper, as the title of his classic 1968 survey of the game in its birthplace. At a time of uncertainty, when it is becoming apparent that a Spanish or Italian coach of high achievement and vast earning power offers no guarantee of success, he seems to offer a certain kind of security.
But Hodgson is a football man with an added dimension of sophistication. Thanks to an early decision to seek his fortune in such places as Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Finland, Denmark and the UAE, he speaks five languages and is widely respected in European football. So he may offer, in a sense, the best of both worlds.
But why would Hodgson now seem an ideal candidate for two extremely demanding jobs when he was not considered last time they fell vacant? The answer lies in the fundamental insecurity afflicting English football, in a long-running crisis of identity that would best be eased, in the case of the national team, by the appointment of a modest, perceptive, articulate man with a deep understanding of the culture of the players who would be at his disposal, and a knowledge of their deficiencies as well as their merits. And then we can reassure ourselves that, after all, no World Cup has ever been won by a team with a foreign coach.