Rome Wasn't Built in a Day, Chapter G; improbable, implausible and contrived

The 21st century started with England's first overseas manager, but most of the next decade and a half would see a 'golden generation' trampled into dust.

g. Improbable, implausible and contrived

The resignation of Kevin Keegan had taken the FA by surprise. Hardly surprising, since it had first been offered in a toilet cubicle somewhere in the bowels of Wembley Stadium. It took three months for them to appoint his replacement, a space that was filled by an increasingly xenophobic-sounding background of white noise.

“We sell our birthright down the fjord to a nation of seven million skiers and hammer-throwers who spend half their year living in total darkness”, as Jeff Powell put it in the Daily Mail in an article which highlighted an important fundamental difference between how the elder statesmen of what would become legacy media and younger supporters.

There was an ethical case that could be made against hiring a foreign manager, that any nation that considers itself to be a ‘great’ football nation should be able to produce at least one manager with the ability and the skillset to do this most peculiar of jobs. It was a symbol of a broader decline in the standard of the English game.

When Premier League clubs became able to buy in the best players on the planet, a lot of English players were simply squeezed downwards in the marketplace. Managers weren’t being overlooked because they were English. They were being overlooked because when clubs started to realise that they could also bring in the best coaches from abroad, they didn’t have the required skill set.