England target Sam Allardyce turned into one of football’s great innovators by spell in America
Sunderland boss in talks with the FA over taking over from axed Roy Hodgson in wake of shambolic Euro 2016 campaign
IT has rankled with Sam Allardyce for a decade that he wasn’t appointed England manager after Sven-Goran Eriksson quit.
He thought he was the best man for the job then — and still believes he is now.
When we were putting together his autobiography last summer, Allardyce continued to cling to the belief his day might come. And if the latest events turn in his favour, it might be sooner than we think.
He admitted it was a long shot, he was out of the game and even thinking about retirement having just left West Ham.
Fast forward to this July and he is hot property, having miraculously saved Sunderland from relegation.
He is now odds-on to replace Roy Hodgson having had his interview with the FA. Allardyce has put in the hard yards in what can be an unforgiving industry.
I can vividly recall supping a pint with him in a hostelry on the outskirts of Bolton back in the early 90s as he contemplated the future — and it wasn’t pretty.
His playing career was at an end and he’d grabbed the only available job he could find as a youth team coach at Preston.
He needed it to pay the bills because he feared he was going to lose the family home due to a failing pub business.
He told me: “I know that I can be a really good manager, I just need that chance.”
Big Sam rattled through his different experiences during an extensive playing career for some of England’s less fashionable clubs including the likes of Bolton, Huddersfield, and Millwall.
Each, he maintained, contributed to an extensive learning curve.
But none at home made an impression on him like the US soccer team Tampa Bay Rowdies, which had access to all the best training aides because of their links to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers NFL team.
Allardyce only played for the Rowdies for five months but the adventure provided him with the managerial know-how which today sees him in pole position for the England post.
As he finished his beer he told me: “Nobody does it here like the Rowdies. We still haven’t caught up in this country. We are miles behind.”
There was a view that players who nipped off Stateside in the summer months crossed the Atlantic for a jolly, a paid family holiday with a bit of football thrown in.
But it opened Sam’s eyes up very wide indeed.
Speaking in his autobiography, he revealed: “We had access to all the Bucs’ backroom staff and their training facilities.
“The way they prepared during the week opened my eyes and was another one of those life-changing experiences.
“I learned there was so much more to conditioning than what we did in England where you had a run around in training, a game of five-a-side, steak for a pre-match meal, a shot of whisky from the skip on the way out on to the pitch and a couple of pints in the bar afterwards.
“Their attention to detail for every player was staggering.
“There were physios and doctors available on site and mobile scanners to instantly check on injuries.
“They also had three masseurs. I’d never been at a club which even had one.
“I had hamstring problems but they identified the scar tissue building up and got right down to work, digging their thumbs and fingers deep into my aching muscles while I squealed like a pig.
“Over a period of time, my hamstrings improved no end and I hadn’t felt so good for years.
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“There were half-a-dozen ‘strapping’ men who would rigorously tape you up for protection against injury.
“The Americans and Canadians wouldn’t dream of going on the pitch without being totally strapped up.
“We had a psychiatrist, too, which I initially found rather strange. But nobody thought anything of it out there. Football clubs in England have only recently learned of their benefits.
“The Bucs had separate programmes for the quick players, and the heavy lads were constantly pounding away on the big weights.
“There was a head coach, defensive coaches, offensive coaches, kicking coaches and conditioning coaches along with nutritionists.
“And they had statistics guys and analysts who planned the plays and monitored everyone’s performance, in training and in games. Nothing was left to chance.”
There are football fans who still consider this master football manager as some sort of Neanderthal long-ball merchant who has no idea how the game has moved on.
The truth is that he is one of English football’s great innovators, who has always been willing to experiment with the latest developments.
He was an old-school player who learned how important it was to mix in new school ideas when he became a boss — a perfect combination.
He has always been ahead of his time. Sir Alex Ferguson himself said so in the foreword to Allardyce’s book.
Fergie recalled: “I remember my first trip to Bolton after they had just moved to their new stadium.
“I was more than intrigued by their substitutes pedalling away on bicycles while the match went on. After the game, to get to Sam’s lounge, you had to pass through the video analysts’ room where there were a number of boffins digesting and detailing the previous 90 minutes.
“Sam was ahead of his time and through his exhaustive use of video analysis, he was able not only to assess home talent but to scout players from all over Europe.”
Back in 2006, when Allardyce was first interviewed for the England job, he prepared what he described as a “magnificent, knock-your-socks-off” PowerPoint presentation — only to be told the FA didn’t have any facilities to show it.
They, too, were way behind Allardyce. However, Dan Ashworth, the FA’s technical director, who is on the three-man selection panel, is not so out of touch.
In Allardyce he recognises he may have the man who will help him build the foundations of a new, progressive FA.
That is Ashworth’s dream.
Big Sam once famously said that if he’d been called Allardici, he would have had a better shot at the top jobs because the country was so obsessed with trendy foreign managers.
Now England are on their knees they could finally turn to the homegrown bloke from Dudley, who once so carelessly slipped through their butter fingers.
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