Hod struck down by word and deed

I'm not sure why but I kept thinking of the late Bill Shankly on Tuesday evening, wondering what he would have made of it all. Imagine if, 18 years after taking his leave of us, he'd finally managed to tune his heavenly telly in to the terrestrial channels that night just in time to hear the headlines on the BBC's nine o'clock news.

"Good evening," said Peter Sissons, sporting a rather grave expression. "The Football Association tonight sacked the England coach for his remarks about reincarnation."

"Matt! Jock! Over here! I've found a wild funny comedy show on the BBC," Bill might have said. Matt Busby and Jock Stein would have laughed. Rolled around on the clouds, in fact. So, football, Hoddle-style, isn't a matter of life and death, it's a matter of reincarnation and Karma? Bill, Matt and Jock couldn't have handled that kind of tosh at all.

But don't be fooled lads, if Glenn Hoddle was truly sacked for offending the disabled then Stan Collymore is a mature, hardworking, well-balanced individual. And Dennis Wise will collect this season's fair play award. Hoddle was sacked because he wasn't a very good manager. Full stop. As we now know he expressed exactly the same muddled, offensive views on reincarnation months ago on a BBC Radio show and even if few heard them you can be sure the FA got wind of their employee's latest ramblings. If Hoddle had won the World Cup with England last summer the offended disabled would have been told to bugger off by the vast majority of the press last week. (Note: One of the papers screaming for his dismissal, the Sun, was forced to apologise last year for airbrushing out a wheelchair-bound England cricket fan from a photo they used of celebrating supporters after a Test victory over South Africa. It seems they thought he'd ruin the happy image).

Tony Blair would have said it was a matter for the FA and sports minister Tony Banks, for once in his life, would have offered "no comment". They all would have rounded on Times journalist Matt Dickinson and accused him of misinterpreting their hero's comments and the whole affair would have blown over. But then if Hoddle had won the World Cup with England last summer it would have put the water-in-to-wine business at Cana in to the shade. Even with the help of an impressive crop of foreign players an English club hasn't even reached a European Cup final since 1984. Why, then, should anyone, including Hoddle, have expected the national side to win the World Cup? And he did, too. Yet more evidence of the man's powers of self-delusion. If he'd even got England off to a bright start in their European Championship qualifying campaign he might have survived, but he didn't - defeat by Sweden last September and a woeful display against Luxembourg the following month turned the world and his mother (and Alan Shearer) against him. Even if, hard as it may be, you ignore the Eileen Drewery faithhealing issue, Hoddle provided enough reasons over the past 12 months for the FA to sack him 12 times over, if they'd had the guts. But they didn't, they clung on to the hope that he would be a successful England manager and only gave up on him when he provided ample evidence that he never would be.

His off-the-field handling of two of the country's brightest prospects, Michael Owen and David Beckham, was his most appalling offence. "There are certain things he needs to stamp out of his game and from his offthe-pitch situation as well. He is not the finished article that everyone thinks he is," he said, begrudgingly, of Owen in December 1997. That's the same Michael Owen who, from a distance at least, appears to be your quintessential `model professional', a remarkably modest, down-to-earth teenager who has so much talent it's scary. When Hoddle finally gave up on Teddy Sheringham, gave in to public pressure and played Owen from the start in the World Cup, the youngster responded with displays that very much suggested he was the finished article. Never one to admit he was wrong Hoddle insisted his plan all along was to save Owen for the latter stages of the World Cup. By then they had flown home. Tony Adams' book Addicted provided another interesting insight in to Hoddle's nasty streak when it came to dealing with young players. Love him (if you're a United fan) or loathe him (if you're not), Beckham is wonderfully talented, if not quite the player he is often hyped up to be. Adams' account of Hoddle's belittling of Beckham in front of the entire squad during an England World Cup training session confirmed the suspicion that this man would probably do more to destroy the confidence of his young players than build it up. He dropped Beckham for the first World Cup game and sent the hopelessly inarticulate player out to a press conference to try and articulate how distraught he was feeling. Sensitive, eh?

And then he published his contemptible World Cup diary, for which he netted £200,000, betraying the confidences of all his players. And then there was the business with Ray Parlour and Dennis Wise. Both players were sent by Hoddle to Drewery, both players subsequently made less than complimentary public comments about her healing talents - neither player made it to the World Cup. Perhaps neither should have, although Parlour had just had a magnificent season for Arsenal, but you began to wonder what criteria Hoddle was using for selecting his squad. "Glenn's been crucified," was Drewery's unfortunate description of Hoddle's fate on Tuesday evening when she was interviewed `exclusively' on Sky News that night (exclusively, that is, until she turned up on every other channel within the hour).

Well Eileen, maybe if he learns a little humility he'll be resurrected. Meantime the rest of us should shed no tears for him. He might have been sacked, officially, for the wrong reasons, but he deserved his fate.