Only a genius can live up to England’s great expectations

By the Times’s Simon Barnes

No coaching job is impossible. The England job, so abjectly vacated by Steve McClaren last week, is not impossible; what, after all, is a coach required to do? A very good coach consistently enables players to achieve the best results they are capable of. That can be done with any team or individual. Sven-Göran Eriksson came close to doing it for England, with three successive quarter-final finishes and 2½ near-immaculate qualifying campaigns. McClaren fell short. England were capable of qualifying for Euro 2008 and messed it up.

The problem with being a football coach is not coaching but the expectations of your employer. Which, unless your team are owned by Roman Abramovich, means the expectations of supporters. Thus a Manchester United manager is required to win the league title at least every other year, the Arsenal manager to do so one year in three, the Liverpool manager at least once, soon. About 15 Barclays Premier League managers are expected to provide a top-ten finish; all 20 are expected to avoid relegation.

Clearly, then, not all expectations are capable of realisation. That’s why football coaching is a somewhat silly business. An England manager is expected to win the World Cup, a trophy the country has won once in 18 tournaments, having entered 15. A brief glance at England’s record demonstrates that with a good coach the country generally provides a quarter-final sort of team. So the job has a silly expectation.You come in, do your damnedest and, if you are a very good coach, you will leave with a quarter or a semi to your name and your reputation undamaged - everywhere except England.

But there are coaches of genius who enable players to achieve results beyond their capabilities. If England expects a World Cup victory, they need someone capable of making the players play better than they do normally. In other words – are you listening in Soho Square? – the safe candidate can only fail.

Harmison sets inevitable tone

Last Friday was an anniversary. A year ago, England began their defence of the Ashes. It was so bizarre that, initially, my brain was unable to process what my eyes had seen. The first ball of the series caught by second slip; alas, not off the edge of the bat.

“It was the way he took it,” David Lloyd said at dinner that evening, more than once, each time miming Andrew Flintoff’s nonchalant big-handed take, as if catching wide balls was a tiresome part of second slip’s routine. “Did you write about it at all?” Just the 800 words, Bumble.

Stephen Harmison set the tone of fight and defiance for the Ashes summer of 2005 with his terrifying first over at Lord’s and he set the tone of horror and dismay for the return series with that extraordinary first ball. It led, with dreadful inevitability, to England’s still unbelievable capitulation in Adelaide. Adelaide remains one of the great sporting experiences of my life – that is, if you count horror, misery and despair as a sporting experience.

Now the old enigma, President for Life of the Sensitive Fast Bowlers’ Union, is warming up for the Tests in Sri Lanka. Took a wicket yesterday, was looking good and then there was a bit more dreadful inevitability. He collapsed with a back spasm.

So much of England’s hope depends on his state of mind and health, and the problem is that some bloody fool must have told him. Spacer

Cruel hand that never fails to hold us in its grip

My old friend Murray Hedgcock, an Australian journalist of distinction, has e-mailed me in bafflement. It’s football. It always gets to him. He learnt about sport by means of Aussie Rules, in which the stronger team invariably rack up more goals (and, of course, behinds) than the weaker. “I just cannot comprehend the ethos of a code so heavily dependent on that monetary flash of inspiration, or [all too often] a disputed refereeing decision. Or just luck,” he said.

He has a point. The insanely high value of the currency in football means that the stronger team – the side who “deserve” to win - do not always do so.

But for a late onset of furious ambition from Croatia, England would have drawn on Wednesday, undeservedly qualified for Euro 2008, Mac’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world. And we’d have been stuck with him for another two years.

Murray wonders if something in the English psyche “demands such cliffhangers, such agony”. Perhaps, but, if so, we share it with most of the sporting world.

There is a genuine global appetite for the unlucky defeat, for the utterly unmerited victory; in short, for cruelty. All sports are cruel – that is their point – but football is the cruellest of all. That is because with cruelty comes caprice.

And it is an ineluctable rule – set forth by Mr Deacon, the artist of ill-repute in Anthony Powell – that he who enjoys the fruits of caprice must accustom himself to bear caprice’s lash.

The William Hill Sports Book of the Year prize is supposed to offer encouragement to original, thoughtful and insightful writing. Instead it generally gives the prize to a book about dead boxers. I have the two most enjoyable football books of the year on my desk and neither has made the shortlist. Musa Okwonga’s A Cultured Left Foot: The Eleven Elements of Footballing Greatness is a splendid thing, never even tried before, and Brian Glanville’s England Managers is simply essential reading.

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