The Sports Cult

Roy Hodgson

Roy Hodgson was born in 1947.

His playing career started in ‘63 when he joined the Crystal Palace youth team. Hodgson played with 7 teams before retiring in ‘76 but Palace is the only team worth mentioning.

As soon as he retired he went right into coaching and has now coached 18 teams. Of the 15 club teams the most notable were Inter Milan, Blackburn, Copenhagen, Udinese, Fulham, and Liverpool. He is currently managing West Brom. His national teams were Switzerland, UAE, and Finland. He hasn’t actually been hired by ‘The Three Lions’ yet.   

In his time at Fulham, he miraculously helped the team avoid relegation in 2008 by winning his last three games. In the 2008-2009 season he helped the club finish 7^th in the Barclay’s English Premier League table and earn qualification into the EUFA Europa League; and in the 2009-2010 season the team finished runners-up in the Europa League.

His success in London helped him to get signed by Liverpool, where he failed miserably.

So the question beckons…is he good for the National Team?

I say yes.

His time with ‘The Cottagers’ was so successful because he is a manager who asks his boys to fight hard and give their all for the team, and that crop of players really put on their hard hats and rolled up their sleeves for him. However, with ‘The Reds’ he failed because he was in charge of spoiled brats who have been spoon fed one too many times in their career and require a certain amount of creative freedom.

Unfortunately for Roy, England has the same type of players.

Fortunately, however, he has limited time to mold this group of players and might actually benefit from that.

A better candidate to take over in a disaster situation would be Claudio Ranieri but the English public has made it obvious that they want an Englishman at the helm. With that said Hodgson is the next best thing if you need to quiet the storm.

He’s the man you want in charge if England were to lose their first 2 games and they need a big win to make it out of the group and I have a feeling that may be what the doctor ordered. He has shown the ability to get his team out of dodge as an underdog and it might be best for England if everybody writes off their chances now.

I don’t believe that Hodgson is Mr. Right but he certainly has what it takes to be Mr. Right Now.

Photo from: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02206/Roy_Hodgson_2206450b.jpg

Some info was taken from Wikipedia.

Tags: Association Football, Barclays English Premier League, Blackburn Rovers FC, Claudio Ranieri, Crystal Palace FC, England, FC Copenhagen, FC Internazionale de Milano, Finland, Fulham FC, Liverpool FC, Roy Hodgson, Switzerland, Udinese Calcio, UEFA Europa League, United Arab Emirates, West Bromwich Albion

This entry was posted on April 30, 2012 at 9:32 PM and is filed under International Soccer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.