THE WISE OLD OWL

JONNY BRICK EXAMINES THE CAREER OF LEGENDARY COACH AND MANAGER ROY HODGSON...

ROY Hodgson has not yet written his memoir. You would imagine it would open with the Grief in Nice: England 1-2 Iceland. For yet another famous coach, the job of England manager became impossible.

Less impossible and less costly would be the task of translating the book from English into Italian, French, Swedish and German. Hodgson is fluent in all these languages because he went native while he was working across Europe in his five-decade career as coach.

Hodgson's life began in Croydon. He taught PE at Alleyn's, a private school in Dulwich, south London, while playing semi-professionally at various clubs around Kent including Gravesend & Northfleet.

There are few managers as well travelled as he: in Sweden, he had success with Halmstad, Orebro and Malmo; he did so well in Switzerland with Neuchatel Xamax that he was appointed the national team manager and steered them to Euro 96. The only reason he was not still in charge for the tournament was because Inter Milan made him an offer he could not refuse.

His squad benefitted from the abolition of the three-foreigner rule, and included Ivan Zamorano, Youri Djorkaeff, Nwankwo Kanu, Paul Ince and Roberto Carlos, who disliked that he was being used as a winger rather than a left-back.

A two-legged UEFA Cup final against Schalke in 1997 went to penalties, which Inter lost.

After being sounded out as Germany manager, Hodgson instead took charge of the Finnish and UAE national teams, with a season at Viking Stavanger in Norway.

In his tactical bible Inverting The Pyramid, Jonathan Wilson spends a few pages on Hodgson's Swedish adventure. He had been brought across by his friend Bobby Houghton and between them they devised a winning strategy: zonal defending, a hard press and a high offside line, with the ball reaching the attacking areas much more quickly than normal.