Dear God !
What on earth is going on in English football ? Not only were they humiliated by Iceland at the Euros, an event which caused the resignation of then manager Roy Hodgson, but now Hodgson's replacement has shown himself to be a naïve idiot.
Sam Allardyce may have been a reasonably effective club manager, but how did the Football Association ever believe that he was the right man to appoint as manager of the national team ? Yes, Allardyce obviously wanted the job and didn't make the excessive wage demands of other candidates, but those are hardly reasons for handing the job to a man who was always likely to prove a disappointment. In the event, it took him only just over 2 months to embarrass both himself and the FA sufficiently for his tenure to be terminated.
Allardyce is the headline story but the real story is the utter incompetence of the Football Association. For decades, they have distinguished themselves by their inept managerial appointments and the consistency with which English national teams have been humiliated on the world stage. Given that English football has vast wealth, it is a shocking indictment of its management, that is the FA, that they have been unable to secure the services of a genuinely top-class manager who has then delivered top-class international results.
No doubt there will be much soul-searching and gnashing of teeth before the next no-hoper is appointed to the manager's job - whether this one will just not be up to the job, will have strange world-views, will be a 'wide-boy', or will have hitherto undisclosed 'baggage', we can be sure that, as long as the FA remains in charge and unreformed, the appointee will be another 'wrong-un' and the English national team will remain a second rate presence in the international arena.
