Do you Care Anymore?

As news filtered in about Fabio Capello, I found myself wondering about the footballing future. I wasn’t thinking about who would be the next England manager, rather I was pondering whether or not I even care about the England football team any more. For the last decade or so, following England has been like watching a soap opera in which none of the characters are remotely likeable (see Hollyoaks).

Let’s take a look at the protagonists in this ghastly soap opera: There’s the FA, a bunch of dithering, joyless grey men who you wouldn’t trust to run a small stationery shop. There’s the players, who increasingly resemble a bunch of primadonnas and thugs who seem more interested in sponsorship deals and leaking stories to the press than winning anything. There’s the (ex) manager Capello, who looked entirely like a temp waiting for 5pm to arrive so he could go home. And then there’s the greatest villain of them all, the English press. It's the press I'd like to focus on.

For the last twenty years or so, the role of the English football press has been to destabilise and unsettle the English football team as much as is humanly possible. Their mission is to dig up enough stories on a manager, lampooning and vilifying him until he is a public laughing stock and his position is essentially untenable. The cycle nearly always starts the same way: a new manager is appointed and given a certain amount of breathing space, depending on whether the press have campaigned for him to be installed (Keegan) or dislike him (Eriksson, Capello). Ultimately it doesn’t matter how much breathing space the manager is given, because it will always end the same way, with the manager leaving, and the press crowing with delight and assuring the English public that the next manager offers a fresh new hope, and that all the perennial problems with English football can be swept under the carpet.

When Glenn Hoddle ended his reign as England manager, the tabloid press started a campaign to get “people’s choice” Kevin Keegan installed as manager. It didn’t matter that he was inexperienced and had a history of walking out on his clubs, after the distant, tactical management style of Hoddle, the press demande ... MORE

Greg is a staff member and supports Tottenham Hotspur