Lunatic Fringe

Fast-forward, then, to 11 November 2007, and the final steps of a very different attempt to ‘make it’ in Vienna – not entry to the Art School this time, but into the Ernst Happel Stadion, on June 29, for the final of Euro 2008. We are among the 88,000 faithful congregated at the newly-opened Wembley Stadium to see England play Group E leaders (and already Switzerland-and-Austria-bound) Croatia in the final group game. The scenario was simple: should Russia win away to Andorra (a country so lowly – in footballing terms, if not geographic – that they even play their home games away), then England would require a draw to secure progression to the tournament stages. There is rain – and tension – in the air.

The details of the game are drearily familiar: Carson’s clanger, leaving 82 minutes for him to dwell on the dream-shattering reality of a howler on competitive international debut (82 minutes, therefore, for the fans to shit themselves with every incoming shot); Olić’s neat second, then a second-half fightback through Lampard and Crouch, before Petrić’s drive leaves England with a dozen minutes to claw themselves up from the precipice. Meanwhile, in Barcelona, Russia lead only by a single goal and, utterly incredibly, Andorra, the minnows of the minnows, fashion a goalscoring chance…

The rain is now torrential, and as England’s chances of qualification recede in the face of this bright and highly motivated Croat performance, the manager, Steve McClaren, could do nothing more than look on forlornly from the edge of his technical area, sheltered from the elements by a large, blue-and-red FA umbrella, his utterly English fecklessness accentuated by juxtaposition with his guitar-playing, chain-smoking opposite number, Slaven Bilić. Wembley may well possess the largest roof-covered seating capacity of any stadium in the world, but it might as well have been on Salisbury Plain as far as McClaren was concerned. There on his pitchside stage, at the dramatic hinge point of his life – a moment for him to inspire his players, to galvanize his countrymen – what did our hero do? He sipped on a hot beverage. Wetness personified (ironically enough); drenched in bathos. A drip.

Now, given that this is a man who appeared conversant with the post-sheepskin world of football management (indeed, he was headhunted by Manchester United on the basis of his forward-thinking, stat-wielding modernism) and thus one who, upon his appointment to the top job, engaged self-styled PR ‘guru’ Max Clifford – who else? – to manage his media relations, this was hardly the projection of the sort of image of Churchillian Gafferdom that his proudly three-lion-tattooed countrymen would have expected in their hour of need. It was anti-charisma; the instantaneous evaporation of all his credibility. How else can you describe such a colossally ill-judged act of berkishness? Surely Clifford had briefed him: “whatever you do, Steve, don’t make yourself look an ineffectual nincompoop in front of ninety-thousand Englanders”. “Check”.

So, how do you account for these self-inflicted wounds? What on earth possessed him?

Well, clearly the hapless McClaren’s ridiculous shelter-seeking can only be explained by an abject fear that the frankly preposterous quiff that he vigilantly maintains – an island of sparse vegetation undergoing rapid, aerosol-induced desertification as it drifts ever further from the continental land mass of his main coiffeuse – would be flattened, unflatteringly, by the teeming rain, leaving a great sodden ginger smear plastered to his bonce. And once those oh-so-carefully positioned follicles were relieved of their main job – simulating full-head-of-hair conditions (from a certain precise angle, in a certain light) – then who’s to tell how far down the face such a damp tongue might loll. Not so much a hairdo, as a hair-don’t, to borrow a much-used gag.

We can now chuckle at the absurdity of it all, but it’s worthwhile taking a moment here to question the wisdom of employing, in ostensibly the most important post in your national game, a man who, in order to maintain his self-esteem – and thus his authority as Boss – requires certain precise meteorological conditions to be in place! (“Sorry, guys, I won’t be coming in today. Too windy!”)

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