In April of this year, I wrote, "The ignominy of failing to qualify for Euro-2008 is only a few games away, and under the current coaching methods and management style it is sadly predictable." Last night, that dire forecast came to pass, because of weak and foolish decisions and team management by the English coach.

The statistics of football decreed that England could qualify for Euro-2008 if they did not lose their final Group match against Croatia, and so Mr. McClaren played with 10 defenders and 1 attacker. He obviously has not heard of the age-old maxim, "The strongest form of defence is attack!"

No doubt we have seen the end of his term in charge of the English team, and we now have to endure weeks, if not months, of the FA's woolly-minded deliberations. There will be no clean and decisive action from the behemoth's at 25 Soho Square, London; it is said that dinosaurs had a brain the size of a walnut, and you can be assured that the nuts at the FA will eventually make a ponderous and exacerbating decision.

Their short list of potential replacements will be stuffed with foreigners and perhaps the occasional Englishman to appease the natives of England. You will see Mourinho's name high on the list, and a better manager and leader of me you will be hard-pressed to find. His departure from Chelsea brought tears to they eyes of his team, while some like Drogba openly cried in pain and disbelief.

Arsene Wenger's name will also be put forward, but as he is quoted as saying a few weeks ago, "If I'm England manager and I play France, which anthem do I sing?" He is a firm believer in the theory that you must be English to get the best from an English football team. Not that the FA will take that into consideration after the abysmal failure of their last choice.

I cannot imagine a German or French national team coached and managed by an Englishman; there would be a revolution at the mere mention of the idea.

There is so much difference between coaching a leading league team, who train together daily and play some 50 or more football games in the year, to coaching a national team who train together for only a few days and play about a dozen games in the year. Sven-Goran Eriksson was a brilliant league manager before taking the England job, and recent results with Manchester City show he has not lost his touch at that level, but he simply failed to get the national team to perform to the satisfaction of the fans.

However, as National Coach Eriksson improved England's FIFA World ranking from 17^th place (Jan 2001) to 5^th place (July 2006). I shudder to think about their new ranking; we were 11^th in September 2007. If Scotland, currently 13^th, deservedly moves ahead of England in the rankings, they will probably declare a national holiday!

Earlier this year, I called for the resignation of the complete FA without success. They are the reason for England's failure to qualify for Euro-2008, because they chose the wrong person to coach the team. Let us hope that this time around they will do a better job. All English supporters should call for complete change at the FA, and force them into selecting the right Englishman for the job - and then leaving him to get on with it.

© Copyright 2007. Brian Hunt. All Rights Reserved.