Will England’s woes turn that smile upside down?

Yesterday, England’s Football Association announced the rather controversial choice of Roy Hodgson to take the reins of the national football team from Fabio Capello for the next four years. He will see out the current Premier League campaign at West Bromwich Albion before moving to the national side.

The 64-year-old will lead his country’s premier football team after managing 18 other teams across Britain and Europe, including three national sides, during a coaching career spanning 36 years. The FA announced that they had decided on Hodgson over a month ago, based on his long experience in both national and league football.

The controversy came from the massive fan (and several key players’) expectations that current Totteham Hotspur manager, Harry Redknapp, would be given the post, but it emerged yesterday that Redknapp was not even approached for the job.

Earlier, striker Wayne Rooney tweeted that Redknapp would have been his choice, as did Rio Ferdinand. Other players, including Steven Gerrard who played under Hodgson during the latter’s brief yet stormy spell at Liverpool, came out in support of the FA’s choice.

So, as well as having to get the players and fans on his side, Hodgson also faces the unenviable task of turning England’s lacklustre performance at the international level around, and the pressure will be on from the get go. England have two friendlies, at Norway on 26 May and home to Belgium on 2 June, before their first match of Euro 2012 against France on 11 June, and should any of those matches go awry, Hodgson is unlikely to be awarded a retrospective grace period like fan favourite Redknapp might have.

If England doesn’t make it out of Group D in Poland and Ukraine this summer (our winter), the media and players will cry, “you picked the wrong man!” while the fans will simply dismiss the choice with “we told you so!”

On the challenges facing him, Hodgson offers plaintive resolve:

The only way you can win people over is by doing the job I am confident I can do. It’s always very important the whole country buys into what we do. I’m expecting a lot of support from everybody.

Hodgson does not have a great amount of turnover time to see how long that support will last.

[Sources: BBC Sport, Mail & Guardian, Independent UK]