Sam Allardyce should not be the manager of England. But he is. The best team he has managed is West Ham United, and he has been lauded only as a specialist in saving teams from relegation. Yes, England is a team which has been sorely lacking in the past few years, however the players he is managing for his country are not as dire as their record suggests. They play for top clubs in which they are coached by top professionals.
Big Sam lacks experience in leading top players. He will be going from managing West Brown to Gary Cahill, from Dame N’Doye to Harry Kane. Experience isn’t enough. What counts is experience at the very top of the game.
A reporter suggested to Allardyce that accepting the job was effectively a poisoned chalice, and he was right. The last successful England coach was Terry Venables in 1996, when England reached the semi-finals of the Euros. But football has changed substantially over the past 20 years, and his methods would not prove so effective now. Football has become more scientific and more intricate. Allardyce’s philosophy belongs to the past (or as Jose Mourinho put it: “Victorian football”); hoof the ball up the field and get as many bodies on the line as possible. Rarely has a team coached by Big Sam ever outclassed an opponent. He wins games by out-muscling the opposition, and England’s current line-up doesn’t stand a chance if this is the game plan that he is going to propose.
The FA has the unique opportunity of starting anew. With a fresh young squad of keen players, it is their chance to instil a fresh footballing philosophy for the English national squad. Instead of searching far and wide for a manager who can play good football to compete with the likes of Germany and France, they have gone with the best that Britain has to offer. It is saddening that the best English manager - in the eyes of the FA - is Mr Allardyce, however that is another matter for another day.
Ultimately, England needs a man who can compete with the top nations in the world. Instead they have gone with a mediocre choice, a man who has neither Claudio Ranieri’s inspiration, nor Mourinho’s class. It is questionable whether he can provide our spoilt yet talented players with motivation, or a quality system that allows us to rival the best in the world.
Our search should have looked far and wide. If the talent in England wasn’t good enough, we should have gone elsewhere. One major problem with our England team is that they are not familiar with playing styles from around the world, and this shows on the global stage. England is the only decent team in the world that has every single player in the first team playing domestic football in their own country. We need foreign guidance. So who does the FA choose to lead us? Allardyce – a man who has never managed outside of the British Isles.
The FA has failed to learn from the example of the England rugby team who appointed Australian manager Eddie Jones after a disastrous major tournament. They have conveniently forgotten that in order to win a World Cup they need to be exposed to how international football is played. It seems that the FA is following the trend of Brexit: focusing inwards and going it alone.
Joshua Korber Hoffman is a 15 year-old football fanatic and Arsenal supporter. He writes a football blog called The Young Gun, in which his love for writing and the beautiful game intersect.
