Sunday 10 June 2012

Secretes and lies

Firstly, some technical issues have come up in the course of writing these first few posts, and I thought you should know.

  1. Don't drop a bog roll on your laptop keyboard. If you do, it turns on caret browsing. Then you have to Google caret browsing to find out what the hell it is.
  2. If you come here and the latest post is poorly capitalised, full of typos, bizarrely off key and full of mismatched and incoherent thoughts, it's because I've accidentally hit Publish rather than Save while I'm making notes during a game. Come back later, and the typos and capitals will be fixed.
  3. No, the heading isn't an example of this.

Gary and Harry

They had Harry Redknapp on the BBC panel yesterday, and Gary Lineker took advantage of the halftime break to do an impromptu interview with him. He asked him all the questions we've been wanting answers to, and Redknapp told him everything we wanted to know.

Is the universe infinite? It's finite but unbounded. Is there a God? in the sense that there's a Captain America, but not in the sense that there's a Scunthorpe. Why do we only realise how to live when we're too old to do much about it? It's a combination of biological inevitability and the illusion of hindsight. Where's the bog roll gone? It's gone wherever it rolled to when it bounced off the laptop.

None of those subjects actually came up. The real conversation was more like this. Did you know Hodgson was going to get the England job? No I didn't, I heard about it through the media like everyone else. Were you approached? No I wasn't. Would you have taken it? It would have been hard to refuse, but I like being a club manager and in some ways I was relieved not to be asked.

The highlights are here (Harry Redknapp would have accepted England job).

All of this raises questions, most pressingly how much of that is true? If it's all true, if the FA never discussed the job with Redknapp and didn't even tell him he was out of the running, if it never occurred to them to send him a courtesy text to the effect that Hodgson was about to get it, then that's a funny way to treat a manager you might well be looking to in a few years.

Don't forget, Redknapp was all over the media as the people's choice. Most people wanted him to get it, and thought he would. If they really didn't acknowledge him at all that's actually bloody rude, to him and to us. Surely they aren't that incompetent? Are they?

Gabby and Roy

After the game Gabby Logan talked to Roy Hodgson (Roy Hodgson talks about Rio Ferdinand's Euro 2012 omission). Ideally, he'd have been called Rabbie, but you can't have everything. If only he was fatter, or poorly dressed.

You all know what it was about. There were no other questions of comparable urgency. The BBC only bothered spelling it out in the link for the benefit of future historians. It was about Ferdinand, and by implication about Terry. Logan avoided his name like an actor trying not to mention the Scottish play, but it loomed all the larger for its absence.

Hodgson said he chose other players over Ferdinand at first, and when he had to get a replacement for Cahill was looking for someone "at the lower end of the squad", and didn't want to bring Ferdinand in just to put him on the bench.

 He looked like someone in a hole, and he certainly kept digging. By the end, he'd managed to say that the very suggestion that the player he took was as good as the player he didn't take was an insult.

Frankly, I wonder about all of this. I wonder about Hodgson's visible discomfort and Redknapp's lack of it. I wonder if the first interview was really that impromptu. I wonder if 'footballing reasons' can have the narrow definition implied. Hodgson seems like an honest man, and he certainly sweats a lot when he's facing tough questions (see?). Redknapp didn't sweat at all that I could see, but then he wouldn't.

I like Redknapp. You know when you like someone because you're happy to see them, and I'm always pleased to see him on the TV because he's good value. Liking someone is an emotional response, not a character reference. Hodgson seems a bit prim. This is no bad thing in the world he moves in, but he's got none of Harry's roguishness at all, and we do like a rogue. Especially a dry one.

There are, shall we way, alternative explanations for events. Perhaps the FA offered Redknapp the job, but he turned it down to stay at Spurs, where he seems happy. As a courtesy, he would have agreed not to undermine Hodgson by showing him up as the second choice. It wouldn't have seemed a huge evasion compared to all the other evasions he was accused of at the time (he said, carefully).

So Hodgson comes in, and the first situation he's faced with is the John Terry one. Ferdinand, like Wayne Bridge, declines to share a squad with Terry, and Hodgson, like Capello, decides that Terry is more central to his plans. Because racism is more embarrassing than shagging, he lies about it. Because he's not naturally a bad man, he feels (and looks) damned uncomfortable while doing it.

Of course, the version both managers have given us might be factually correct in all respects. I've no evidence for anything I've just said. Look at the clips and judge for yourselves.

4 comments:

  1. Nothing to do with football, but I did enjoy this joke in the paper the other day:
    Roy Hodgson went shoplifting in a kitchenware shop. A friend warned him he could be arrested. “That’s a whisk I’m prepared to take.”

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  2. http://www.uefa.com/uefaeuro/season=2012/matches/round=15172/match=2003332/index.html
    I'll come around for this one on Friday if you're available

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  3. That's an excellent plan. It's on Thursday though.

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  4. Thanks, Dave. I wonder if he actually left Rio behind because he couldn't say his name?

    There are, I believe, many joke sites on the Internet. I don't have time to trawl them, so perhaps others could add the highlights.

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