So Mr Sinatra (oh, I know) has finally put old Sven Goran Eriksson out of his misery.
‘By mutual consent’, Sven is now no longer manager of Manchester City.
Have to say I’ve no idea what Sinatra is thinking here — results were good, Eriksson was liked by the players and fans and it did look like he was building something for the future.
UPDATE: Mark Hughes is the new manager.
So Paul Ince has come out and said he’s sad that Capello is likely to be the next England manager.
Because he’s not English.
And Steve Coppell and Gareth Southgate (the turncoat!) agree.
Look chaps. Yes, it’s sad that the FA are likely to choose another foreign coach rather than an English one. But surely that points to the fact that nobody from these shores is yet good enough. Actually, it’s not that sad — if England lift the Jules Rimet trophy in South Africa in 2010 who on earth is going to care what country the guy who made it happen comes from?
The FA’s remit is simple: appoint the best manager possible. Nationality does not come into it.
Just ask any fan who’d they’d prefer: the best manager available or the best English manager available.
Until those two criteria point to the same man, you’ll have to learn to live with it.
So, our football team failed to get the result they needed against Croatia and suddenly blokes up and down the country have a lot more free time next summer.
I actually think this is the best thing that could have happened. England were simply not good enough to emerge from their group in anything but third place: the standings accurately reflect the qualifying campaign. The manager simply wasn’t up to the task and the players didn’t seem to want to play.
There. I said it. You can almost hear it in chorus up and down the country. Steve McClaren just wasn’t up to the task.
Let’s face it, when your nickname is ‘Second Choice Steve’ you’re going to have a hard time convincing people that you’re the right man for the job. There can’t have been many surprised that he was sacked 12 hours after failing to qualify for Euro 2008 but I’ll admit I was a little surprised at his lack of integrity straight after the match — when asked if he was going to resign following the failure, he replied that he wouldn’t, despite the whole nation baying for his blood. Well, would you quit and walk away?
Or would you wait to be fired and pocket £2.5m?
The whole appointment of McClaren was flawed from the start, with various top-line candidates falling by the wayside as the weeks rolled on. Guus Hiddink felt insulted when the FA asked him for a coffee and a chat. Sam Allardyce confused poor Brian Barwick by shouting that the next England manager should be English whilst wearing a t-shirt saying “Me sir! Me sir!”. Luiz Felipe Scolari went all shy on us after news of his meetings with the FA became public knowledge.
And that left Steve McClaren. Brian Barwick maintained that Steve was always his first choice, something that didn’t seem to phase Steve himself:
“I don’t see it as a case of first choice or second choice. I am THE choice and I sit here as the next England coach.”
Spoken like man who can’t believe his luck.
So, this is England in late 2007. Steve is sacked and Barwick is on the lookout for a new manager.
How does that saying go, something about a ‘rudderless ship’?
Barwick must make the choice himself this time — no committees, no board meetings — just get the best man available. But who to ask?
Well, Martin O’Neill would be a good choice. But the FA pissed him off last time, so he appears to have ruled himself out. What about Jose Mourinho? He’d be an excellent choice. Can you imagine the press conferences after another lacklustre England display if he was in charge? No FA-sanctioned soundbites, just an honest appraisal of what happened. The perfect man-manager.
Yes, he could be at loggerheads with the FA at times. But if England are doing well, who on earth is going to care?
And I believe England would do very well under Mourinho.
As I said in September — if Brian Barwick has any sense he’ll be on the phone to Mourinho now.
Think it’ll happen? Nah, me neither.
(The title of this post is in honour of Tony Henry)
A few days ago, I noted that Alonso’s threatening of his team boss was a grave misjudgement on Alonso’s part. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge about McLaren (and, in particular, Ron Dennis) would know before they started that it was a futile and ultimately pointless effort by Alonso.
It now seems that Alonso and Dennis are no longer on speaking terms; indeed, they haven’t been since the Hungary debacle (when Alonso was found guilty of impeding team mate Hamilton during final qualifying, thereby ensuring Hamilton couldn’t get another lap in and leaving Alonso free to run to pole position) back in August.
Historically, when a team boss and driver are no longer speaking it doesn’t bode well for the relationship. Think of Prost and Alesi in 2001.
So where does that leave the Alonso/McLaren relationship? Can they continue after this? I think it highly unlikely. The facts, as they have recently emerged, are:
The last point is also true of Pedro de la Rosa, McLaren’s test driver. I wouldn’t be surprised if, as a result, de la Rosa was shown the door.
Also questionable is how much effort the team are now prepared to put into engineering Alonso to a championship: he’s already proved he thinks he’s above the team, we’ve had revelations that he’s offered money (out of his own pocket) to his mechanics to ensure he beats Hamilton, so surely he can’t expect any preferential treatment now?
It all smacks somewhat of an insecure driver who has been rattled by a rookie.
So all this leaves the burning question: will Alonso be sitting in a McLaren next year?
My guess is that he won’t. He’ll either go back to Renault (who have failed to maintain their competitiveness since Alonso departed) or he’ll sign for Ferrari.
How better to poke Ron Dennis in the eye one last time?
So, the F1 spy scandal has reached a conclusion: for McLaren, a somewhat expensive one. For Ferrari, it’s still too soft.
This all follows new evidence that came to light implicating that McLaren did indeed use sensitive Ferrari data to their advantage. The evidence was submitted in the form of emails between de la Rosa (McLaren’s tester) and Alonso referencing sensitive Ferrari data that came from Mike Coughlan (via Nigel Stepney at Ferrari).
How this evidence came to light is more interesting: Alonso is alleged to have threatened Ron Dennis that, unless Ron made Alonso team leader, he’d show the emails to the FIA. (At the time, Ron claims he knew nothing of the emails and, given his widely publicised integrity, you’d be inclined to believe him.)
Ron then phoned the FIA to inform them of the emails, the FIA then asked the drivers for their full co-operation and the emails were disclosed. The rest is history.
Now, this is all based on rumour and conjecture: nobody is confirming the claims but, interestingly, nobody is exactly denying them either. The best we’ve had is from Alonso’s manager, Luis Garcia Abad:
When asked about the stories of Alonso threatening to reveal the email exchange to the FIA, Abad said: “It’s not true, and it’s not possible. The facts say it is not true because it happened in a different way.”
It’d be interesting to hear what those facts are and how it did happen. If your driver is accused of something as heinous as this, surely you’d issue a swift and thorough rejection?
Ron Dennis won’t confirm what was said between himself and Alonso, but he does say they spoke and that Alonso was “pretty upset by many things”:
“Fernando arrived, pretty upset by many things. I’m not going to give you the detail,” said Dennis.
“In a conversation that took place he said ‘I have something in my e-mail system which is from one of your engineers’.”
If Alonso really did threaten his team boss, then he seriously misjudged Ron Dennis. Anyone with an iota of knowledge about the history of McLaren knows that Ron doesn’t favour drivers: there has never been a ‘no 1′ McLaren driver.
You also have to question Alonso’s motivation: is he really that rattled by Hamilton that he’s prepared to blackmail his own team boss? And, according to one British paper today, prepared to offer his mechanics £650 each to help him beat Hamilton?
Now, Alonso is a double world champion. No mean feat, especially when you remember he beat a certain M Schumacher twice to get those titles. To become a world champion requires certain levels of tenacity, selfishness and ruthlessness.
But these are generally aimed at your competitors, not your own team. If the rumours are true, Alonso has seriously misjudged the situation and, more tellingly, his own standing with McLaren.
Israel on Saturday. Russia on Wednesday. Both Euro 2008 qualifiers that England need to win to be in with a realistic chance of qualifying for the tournament.
Steve McClaren was on the news this morning, and his gist went thus:
“I looked around the room and said “No excuses.” I was very happy with what I saw, with what I’ve got [the squad]. I said “We’ve got enough in this room to win those matches, and we will win them.”
Unfortunately I can’t find this quote anywhere online (yet), so you’ll have to take my word for it. It’s a snippet from a press conference that’s bound to be replayed throughout the coming days.
After England’s abject display against Germany last month, I’d go for a draw against Israel and a win against Russia.
More worringly, perhaps, is McClaren’s view of England’s drab 0-0 draw with Israel in March. Referring to the inclusion of Heskey (lord help us) as a ‘focal point’, something that was missing from the game in March, McClaren said:
“We didn’t have a plan B.”
I can understand not having a plan C, D or E. But no plan B?
Really?
That is worrying.
So, England face Germany tomorrow in a ‘friendly’ international and Steve McClaren faces a selection dilemma: most of his first choice squad are out injured.
The list is rather long: Steven Gerrard, Owen Hargreaves, Darren Bent, Sol Campbell, Wayne Rooney, Peter Crouch, Gary Neville, Jonathan Woodgate and Ledley King are all out. and Jamie Carragher has retired from international football.
Faced with this problem, I would like to see Steve take a risk or two and put a few new faces in the team.
Yes, I know — getting your first senior international cap against Germany is a tall order. There would be a lot of pressure. But it’s a friendly — the only thing at stake is national pride. And the possibility of a permanent berth in the squad if you perform.
Steve should be on the phone to Theo Walcott, Steven Taylor and Leighton Baines to see what they’re up to.
Sure, there’s the slight problem of a couple of Euro 2008 qualifiers coming up, where you’d want your first team fully fit, in harmony and firing on all four. But look at the other side of the coin: you might just find a face that lights up the team and gives it the confidence to go into the remaining Euro 2008 qualifiers all fired up.
You never know, it might put a bit of excitement back into English international football.
With all the hullabaloo regarding whether teams can use one another’s chassis before the new 2008 regulations come into force, it’s interesting to see this picture on Autosport.com of the Red Bull and Toro Rosso in the pitlane at Barcelona.
They look remarkably similar.
“It’s definitely not the same car. It’s very easy to see that. It’s not just the engine, a lot of stuff is different.”
Paintjob, drivers, management…
The FIA have released the 2007 FIA Formula One World Championship entry list.
There’s a bit to take in — new sponsorship deals for McLaren (Vodafone), Renault (ING) and Williams (AT&T); a few rookies in top teams (Hamilton, Kovalainen) and the positioning of the drivers within teams. For example, I find it interesting to see Massa as no. 5 and Raikkonen as no.6 at Ferrari.
Looking down the list, it appears that teams give the first number to their longest serving driver (true of Renault, Ferrari, Honda, BMW, Red Bull, Williams, Spyker and Super Aguri).
In fact, only Honda and Toyota are the only teams with an unchanged lineup (OK, so BMW ran Kubica from Germany onwards last year, but they started with Villeneuve. Spyker haven’t confirmed their second seat yet, so it could go to Monteiro — which would also add them to this list).
I’m just looking forward to seeing how the respective graphics departments have done with the new colour schemes (McLaren = grey/black — Vodafone = red | Renault = yellow — ING = orange). An unenviable task!
Juan Pablo Montoya has announced that he’s leaving F1 at the end of the season to race in the American Nascar series. This is serious news.
Montoya has the credentials to justify his presence in F1: 7 wins, 30 podiums, 13 pole positions and 3rd place finishes in the F1 World Championship (in 2002 and 2003). On paper, this looks like a man who belongs in F1. The fact he’s leaving can only be for one of two reasons: he’s either become disillusioned with the whole F1 circus, or he was left without a competitive seat in 2007 — it’s no secret that Montoya’s McLaren contract expires at the end of 2006, and some might argue that he’s the wrong side of 30 to be getting another shot with a top team.
Montoya and McLaren haven’t gelled, for whatever reason. The McLaren MP4-21 is an understeering beast, a trait JPM dispises, and whilst Raikkonen made the best of the MP4-21 last season on his way to winning 7 races, Montoya managed just three wins and 72 fewer points than Kimi.
So earlier in the year when contracts for 2007 and beyond were being discussed, many thought Montoya was heading out of McLaren (to be replaced by Alonso) perhaps ending up at Red Bull or Toyota. Montoya himself said nothing of his contractual situation, save that he ‘had numerous options’ to stay in F1.
I doubt that many people thought he would actually leave F1 though. Sure, there was speculation that he may hook up with Chip Ganassi (with whom he won his Indy 500 and CART titles) in IndyCar, and Nigel Roebuck hinted in his weekly column a week or so ago that NASCAR might appeal to JPM, but few actually thought a driver of Montoya’s calibre would be allowed to slip out of F1 without a competitive drive.
When asked by Autosport “What was the final straw in leaving Formula One and how did you justify taking a pay cut?” Montoya responded thus:
“I don’t think you’re going to be happy getting more money and being miserable all day. When I called Chip I said, ‘Chip you know what. I want to come back racing, and I think the best place to do racing is here (NASCAR).
“It’s not how many millions you’re making or how much money you’re making. It’s a matter of three years down the line are you going to be excited about what you’re doing or not. I think three years from now when I look at my career I’m going to be happier here.”
Which seems to explain why Montoya is going to NASCAR: he’s bored with F1. It’s a total travesty that someone of Montoya’s calibre should be allowed to leave in this fashion when a driver such as Ralf Schumacher is paid $stupid for crashing, moaning a lot and generally not being very good.