Glenn Hoddle must have known he was in trouble the moment the British Prime Minister abandoned him. Tony Blair, the man with antennae most attuned to the public mood, chose that vital platform for disseminating government information, ITV's This Morning with Richard and Judy, to express his distaste for Hoddle's idiosyncratic views on disabled people.
"If he said what he is reported to have said in the way he is reported to have said it," the Prime Minister told a waiting nation, or at least those watching morning telly, "then I think that was very wrong."
But how has it come to this? How could a man who apparently had the world at his feet barely 18 months ago have fallen so far, so quickly?
Oddly enough, it is possible to see evidence of his potential for self-destruction even on that triumphant autumn evening in Rome.
On October 11th, 1997, a fortnight before Hoddle's 40th birthday, England drew with Italy to secure their place in the World Cup finals.
Everything he had planned for his team had worked that night, everything he wanted them to do had fallen into place. He wore a smile so wide it must have hurt. In that moment, Glenn Hoddle looked fulfilled. The next day, he returned to England to the kind of press football managers dream about. Column inches were filled with eulogies to his team. Most papers carried profiles of Hoddle. The articles talked about his calmness, his drive, how his spirituality was such an asset in a job as tricky as his.
And they talked about his family, about how having a secure background gave him the stability to strive in his workplace.
That evening Hoddle returned to his wife, Anne, at their home in Ascot. Typical Glenn, that. But this occasion was different.
This was the night of all nights that Hoddle chose to tell Anne he was leaving. "The marriage had run out of steam," was his brusque epitaph for an 18-year relationship. Though subsequently it appeared a more significant factor was a relationship involving the wife of a former acquaintance coming to the boil.
In football as in any other profession marriages break up under the strain of frequent absence. There was nothing unusual in the end of this one, except its manner and timing: curt, matter of fact and ruthlessly executed.
It also revealed all sorts of clues about the way Hoddle sets about his life. The timing was appalling. Not just for his wife - how must she have felt looking back at those pictures of him cavorting around the Roman turf knowing that in the forefront of his mind the decision to leave her was floating around? But also for his public image: why risk souring the moment when there was plenty of time to do this sort of thing later?
The answer to both questions was the same: Eileen Drewery. Hoddle had discussed his marriage with the woman who has been his spiritual adviser since he was a teenage starlet at Tottenham and she told him to follow his heart and make the break as quickly as possible. And there is no one he pays more heed to than Drewery.
But something else was revealed in Hoddle's treatment of his wife that night: he thought he was unassailable. It was not just the win in Rome that convinced him of his own invincibility. He had been like that all his life.
From the earliest days, this is what everyone says about Hoddle: how utterly determined he was to realise the greatness within him. What you do not hear are yarns, gags and anecdotes. A book of uproarious incidents from Hoddle's life would be about as extensive as the William Hague guide to hair care.
He has never had time for the lightweight, the inconsequential, the silly. Which may be why he could not get on with Paul Gascoigne. He was a man in too much of a hurry to be distracted. He was a man trying to fulfil his destiny.
It was clear to him early in life what it was. All footballers have immense reservoirs of self-confidence; it is a prerequisite for the job to believe you are up to it. But Hoddle was different.
He told his dad at the age of 11 he would play for England. At 12, he told him he would manage his country too. Born with the supernatural grace and balance of the real athlete, he was also blessed with single-mindedness.
As a child he would practise on his own, for at least two hours a night, every night, perfecting his technique in his back garden in Harlow, Essex. That natural skill of his took an awful lot of work.
When he met Drewery, and she healed a nagging injury, that sense of destiny gained a focus. There seemed to be, in her hotch-potch philosophy and grab-bag spirituality, an explanation which legitimised his enormous sense of self. She told him he was chosen. From that moment he behaved as if he was.
So it must have come as something of a surprise that so many of the managers presiding over England teams when he was a player failed to share his own assumptions.
As England's most talented player it seemed astonishing to him he was chosen for the national team on only 55 occasions. Particularly as he was so dedicated to the cause. He did not drink, had a steady home life and trained like a Trojan.
His only sign of deviant behaviour was once releasing an execrable record called Diamond Lights with Chris Waddle and singing it on Top of the Pops while wearing cast-offs from the wardrobe for Miami Vice.
Thus, since as a player he had been prevented from realising his destiny, he could not wait to be a manager. Particularly after his appetite had been whetted by a spell as a player in Monaco, where he was coached by Arsene Wenger, who helped him appreciate that it is possible to be a football manager without behaving as if on the army parade ground.
It was obvious, from the briefness of his tenure at both Swindon Town and Chelsea, that from the moment he became a manager in his early 30s, Hoddle was ambitious.
In 1996, he angered Ken Bates, chairman of Chelsea, with the speed of his departure. But Hoddle did not mind whom he upset: destiny was calling in the shape of the England manager's job.
In truth the blazers at the FA were delighted a man of Hoddle's calibre was happy to take on the position. It had been dubbed by a previous incumbent "the impossible job", such was the pressure from a public hungry for success and a popular press hungry for another scalp. But Hoddle paid no heed to such talk: after all, he was destined for the job - Eileen told him so - and God, or whatever name he gives to the strange eternal being he reckons is directing the film of his life, would look out for him.
So in 1996, he became England coach. He decided to do things his way and some of his theories were good ones. He inherited a reasonable side and the respect he generated from those who remembered him in his prime as a player meant he had a willing audience for his tactical ideas.
At first he did well on the pitch, topping his World Cup group in some style. And while he was winning, the fact he made no allowances for the press did not matter.
Ironically, given what happened subsequently, he came into the job determined to give nothing to a press which he believed had contributed to the downfall of several predecessors.
"He's never been comfortable with the press," said Paul Miller, his friend and former playing colleague. "He's never liked them. He could never forgive them from early on for the criticism they levelled at him. And one thing about Glenn, he never forgets."
He even once refused to do an interview with the FA's own in-house magazine. "I have been stitched up by FA magazines before," was his explanation. Stitched up? By your own house organ? Not even Alastair Campbell is that paranoid.
But the World Cup, the tournament he thought was finally going to provide him with his fulfilment, was the beginning of the end for Hoddle. He made mistake after mistake, tactically and in his man management.
It culminated in his diary, in which he made huge financial capital disclosing information which should have remained confidential. He was losing the respect of his players, who began to question the central importance he placed on Drewery ("it's like joining the Moonies," said one senior player) and publicly wondered why training sessions consisted largely of the manager showing off his ball skills to the watching cameras for 45 minutes. When the qualifying campaign for Euro 2000 began, Hoddle had an increasingly discontented squad.
Typically, Hoddle blamed everyone else for the problems. His only mistake was not taking Drewery to France, he said, a remark which made several senior players wince. And, as he started losing, he found he had no allies in the media.
Thus when his spin doctor, David Davies, suggested a charm offensive of the papers to restore some confidence prior to this spring's qualifying campaign, Hoddle reluctantly agreed. Unfortunately such was his assumption of invincibility he did not appear to listen to Davies's advice that the interviews be about "football, football and football".
So came the fateful interview with the Times, when he seized the opportunity to proselytise his views on the disabled. Since then, he has dug the hole he finds himself in ever deeper, laughably trying to blame the reporter.
Given that the views expressed in the piece were entirely consistent with what he has said before, that he has a history of denying on-the-record comments, and that nobody could have made up such nonsense anyway, perhaps only Drewery has accepted his assertion that he was misquoted. He may not have meant the meaning to come out like that, but he said the words.
Whatever happens, Hoddle is finished, the author of his own demise. No one can work with him again. Not because he has offensive views - football is riddled with those whose opinions would appal London cabbies - but because he is too arrogant, inept and misguided to keep them to himself.
Oh, that and the fact his England team are faltering. Such is the place football holds in the national consciousness, that had he been winning on the pitch, we would have forgiven him anything.
