Steve McClaren
From Frikipedia
Contents |
Background
England's current national football team manager. Replaced Svennis after a tabloid-led campaign of xenophobia forced the FA to claim that England weren't losing on penalties all the time because they were bubbish, but because the manager wasn't English.
Sven got the last laugh by resigning after the 2006 World Cup, and will continue to receive a salary from the FA well into 2008, largely thanks to an earlier tabloid-led campaign of xenophobia which forced the FA to offer Sven a stupidly long contract extension to prove his commitment to the job and that he wasn't just some foreign mercenary.
The Job Interview
McLaren (not to be confused with McLaren) was fairly low down on the list of potential candidates, but through a series of blunders, he was left as the only available candidate. Sort of like The Apprentice, where the candidates are whittled down to the most painfully average eventual winner.
The Glorious Beginning
The obvious deficiencies McLaren possesses as a football manager, like his utter lack of tactical awareness, his short-sighted team selections and his punchable smug face weren't immediately obvious to the England fans. In his first game, England beat current European Champions Greece 4-0. Though it should be pointed out that, rather than the team that won the trophy, the Greek coaching staff had forgotton to bring any players and were fielding 11 blokes who worked in a tapas bar in Hemel Hempsted instead.
After that, McLaren's smug self-confidence was boosted yet further by a remarkable 5-0 win over Andorra, which is a tiny country in between France and Spain containing a ski resort. Despite the fact that this was the equivalent of beating the staff of EuroDisney at cricket, McLaren's stock somehow rose further.
The Fall From Grace
After an incredible run of two games without a choke, however, things began to fall apart for McLaren shortly after then.
Back to back games against Eurovision superpower the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia yielded an unconvincing 1-0 away win (thanks mainly to Creter) and a dismal 0-0 draw at home, which was possibly the most anaemic display of football Friki has ever been forced to endure for reasons of national "pride".
Things got worse when England lost to Croatia 2-0 in a woefully insipid manner, including a hilarious own goal from The Neviller after a backpass bobbled underneath the goalie's feet.
McLaren followed that up by masterminding a slender 1-1 draw against the Dutch reserve team, a 1-0 defeat to Spain, where it is difficult to remember England creating a single chance and a 0-0 away draw against the mightly Israel, by which point most fans were booing quite vociferously and demanding McLaren's head on a platter of some description.
It's All OK!
After that dreadful run of 5 games without a win (and with only 1 goal), England bravely overwhelmed EuroDisney once again by three goals to nil, prompting McLaren to smugly declare that everything was fine, despite the fact that the team was booed by their own fans for most of the game, and if it hadn't have been for sporadic genius Steven Gerrard, they probably would have failed to score there as well.
The Future
Draw. Draw. Win. Draw. Loss. Win. Win. Qualification. Elimination. Degredation. Humiliation.
The Actual Future
Mercifully, though not for McClaren haters, England got back on track with a run of straightforward wins. "Thanks" to the recall of 69 year old American Idol David Beckham, England dispatched Estonia 3-0, then Israel 3-0, then Russia...erm...3-0, then Estonia again, erm, 3-0 again.
All this left McClaren's men with their two most difficult games of the tournament. Away in Russia and at home to Croatia. Avoid defeat in both, and they were through.
Predictably, they failed the first part of the task, losing 2-1 to Russia in Moscow as Wayne Rooney scored and then conceded a penalty in a Beckham-esque hero-to-zero moment.
Less predictably, Russia then lost to Israel, allowing England to scrape through with a draw against Croatia.
Whatever happens, McClaren is on course to sweep the International Flukey Bugger Awards this year.
Quotes
- "Someone who has watched a lot of international football called me and said it was as good a display as they had seen over the entire weekend." - Steve explains to journalists in the post-Israel game press conference how he received a phone call from the Royal National Institute for the Blind's spokesman on a wind up.
