Tony Adams 'bosses England'
by Myles Palmer
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It is a conceptual leap by David Davies to have a fan as England manager.
Why did nobody think of it before?
And the big thing to come out of a ghastly, tedious week of play-off previews is that Tony Adams rather enjoys being coached by superfan Kevin Keegan.
Keegan wears the kit, tells the lads they are fantastic, and expects to win every game. And, like the fans, he asks:"Should I play Andy Cole or Michael Owen?"
Like Bobby Robson, he gets us involved with his dilemmas. And I love that. My biggest complaint over the last nine years is that the managers don't share the team with us as much as Bobby Robson did.
I used to love chatting to Bobby after games, and after the daily hacks had nipped back upstairs to phone in his first quotes. (This was before laptops and mobiles).
Bobby talked about each player affectionately and in detail, telling us exactly what he wanted from Beardsley, Hoddle, Hodge, Walker, whoever.
Bobby was open and generous and gave us a lot to chew on between
games.He shared the England team with us because he was humble
enough to realise it was ours as much as his.
Graham Taylor was an uptight Third Division full back who had never played with good players, so he had an inferiority complex.
His spiel was scripted and he made a complete fool of himself in The Impossible Job, that documentary. He told reporters:"Your teams never play".
Terry Venables was very suspicious of everybody: the opposition, his bosses and the media, so he just fed stories to his cabal of groupies.
Tel took England forward tactically, but he tinkered so much, adjusting to nullify his opponents, that he drew most of his games. Only his first match, Denmark, and the 4-1 stuffing of Holland were memorable.
Glenn Hoddle was a solid tactical coach who could plan a game
and plan a result.
Hoddle did that with his 0-0 in Rome where he used Ian Wright
as his first defender, chasing Italy's defenders, a radical but
effective selection.
But he was too arrogant, paranoid and strange. Sharing did not come naturally to a man whose huge gifts put him in a fame bubble from the age of 12.
Glenn hated sharing so much he refused to allow Howard Wilkinson, the FA Technical Director, in the official FA party for France 98. Poor old Wilko had to make separate arrangements!
Then came Kevin Keegan, the Doncaster dynamo, the man the Hamburg fans nicknamed Mighty Mouse.
It was widely believed that Keegan was closely marked in the 1977 European Cup Final by Berti Vogts of Borussia Moenchengladbach. That is one of the great football myths of the Seventies.
I remember the game vividly: Keegan huffed and puffed and made it look like he was running two consecutive marathons. I said at the time, and I will say it again: Keegan spent the whole 90 minutes chasing Vogts. He marked Vogts, Vogts did not mark him.
Keegan today is an enthusiastic patriot, a superfan, a cheerleader. But, of course, he is no tactician, and some of us knew that long before Anelka's two goals against France got him the job (Link to fb22).
Thursday's wonderful quotes from Tony Adams confirmed what we already knew, in an unintentionally amusing way.
Adams said he finds Special K much friendlier and warmer than Hoddle, whom he criticised in Addicted, his excellent autobiography.
Big Tony said, "The guys relate to Kevin a bit more than previous managers because he talks to them, he loves football and he's a friendly guy. He's a bit closer. Some managers of the past have been a bit more like Arsène Wenger, a bit more father figure-ish.
"Kevin wears his heart on his sleeve. He wants to do well for England and for everyone in this country and that has a knock-on effect on the lads. He cares."
Keegan asked for Adams's advice at half-time in the recent friendly match against Belgium.
"I think every England manager has actually done that. Kevin respects what I've done in past games and he listens and I talk."
Adams is not being big-headed when he says this, just candid.
It quickly became obvious that if Keegan was coach then Adams would be needed to organise the team.
Personally, I think its wrong to criticise Keegan for being more of a fan than a coach. He's the best fan England have ever had, and he is doing his best with a mediocre squad. Half his players are burned out and injured half the time, so they may struggle to beat the weakest Scotland team in history.
Kevin is bright enough to know his limitations.
That is why, after one or two games, we soon started hearing quotes telling us how important Tony Adams is to the team and to the process of qualification for Euro 2000.
Long term, David Davies will keep probably keep Keegan until the 2002 World Cup qualifying campaign starts to go belly-up, then axe him and hire some other mug to pick up the pieces.
That is what the FA usually do and it will be no different next time.