Roy Hodgson flops yet again as England suffer embarrassing Euro 2016 defeat to minnows Iceland that will be remembered forever
Woeful defeat will go down as one of the worst in long line of England humiliations
WHAT a way to go.
Roy Hodgson, distinguished, honourable, noble English gentleman.
A good man, a decent man, he will be remembered for this soul-destroying, pitiful, second-round defeat in Nice. For ever.
There will be no knighthood.
The next time he dines at Scott’s, his favourite restaurant in London’s Mayfair, he will have to pick up the tab. They might even turn him away. Bad for business, sorry Mr Hodgson.
Even the London cabbies will be inclined to swerve him if they see him waving his arms around.
Hodgson has taken the country on yet another wrong turn.
All the privileges that come with being England’s head coach will be taken away. That is the way it has to be.
There will be no favours, not after this. It is three strikes — Euro 2012, World Cup 2014 and Euro 2016 — and out.
He has come up short. Woefully, humiliatingly short.
It hurts like hell. You know it hurts Hodgson just as much.
That is the great shame, because here is a guy who wanted it to work more than anyone in recent history.
Fabio Capello and Sven-Goran Eriksson, try as they might, were always the outsiders peering into our national sport.
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Steve McClaren was, well, just Steve McClaren. An abomination.
Hodgson was different. He is a decent individual and he tried hard, really hard, to make it all fall into place.
Hodgson loves this job, cherishes this job. We know that. He just was not good enough, not savvy enough to make it work at the very highest level.
This great patriot believed he could build a side to live with world champions Germany or pass-masters Spain. In the end, he could not build a side to live with Iceland.
We do not have the players. We certainly do not have the manager.
Iceland go on to play France in Paris on Sunday, just two games away from reaching the final on July 10.
England are going home.
Hodgson is out of work, his reputation in bits after three successive tournament failures.
There is a chance he will never recover, not from a defeat as humiliating as this.
He was given a freebie at Euro 2012, parachuted in at short notice after Capello quit four months before the tournament.
A penalty shootout defeat against Italy in the quarter-final final was no disgrace.
The World Cup in Brazil, when England were on their way home after 120 hours, is very different.
In the build-up to the tournament he claimed that “if he could bottle what we have, then I would be very happy”. Instead, lamentably, on the biggest stage of all, England bottled it.
He should have lost his job after the national team was beaten by Italy and Uruguay in the opening two group games.
How he survived that we will never know. Instead he stayed on, somehow convincing his bosses that he was the right man to lead England through a qualifying round.
He claims to have ushered in a new era of England players, but what else was he supposed to do after the Golden Generation retired?
Rio Ferdinand, John Terry, Ashley Cole, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard all turned their backs on England on his watch.
Even Wayne Rooney, named captain of his country after the 2014 World Cup, could not save him. He wanted to, he really did.
Rooney became England’s record goalscorer under Hodgson but there is not enough quality around him to make it all work.
The pressure here was enormous, hurtling into a tournament knowing that a new contract depended on England’s performances and progress.
Making the magic happen is tougher than it looks.
It never quite worked, tinkering with his formation and his players too many times over the past two years.
Hodgson was never quite sure of his best team, even when they won ten successive qualifiers.
He has never tired of telling people about his qualifying record, but he never mentions the opponents. Funny that.
Switzerland, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania and San Marino are there to be beaten for any England team, even this one.
Still, the target for any England manager is to qualify for the next tournament and — to Hodgson’s credit — he did that twice.
He cannot be given the chance to make it a third because he has failed at the biggest job in international football.
Defeat here, irrespective of the circumstances, proves that.
He needed to pull a rabbit out from a hat when they fell behind in this magnificent setting on the Cote D’Azur.
The sun has set on Hodgson’s England career and he will be off on holiday after this. Make it a long one, Roy.
