INTERNATIONAL FOOTBALL NEWS

This Is The Fourteenth Dalai Lama. He is Viewed As One Of The Most Enlightened Men On The Planet. It Is Believed That His Spirit Has Thirteen Lifetimes And Over One Thousand Years Of Experience. How Do You Explain To Him That The England Manager Has Been Sacked For Believing In Reincarnation?

Thursday 4th February, 1999

The Football Association’s decisions always tend to go along the lines that the have in the week that Glenn Hoddle was sacked for expressing his belief in reincarnation and disability, but rarely have they been so clear cut.

Hoddle had to go. The entire country had turned on him. His usual foes, The journalists had been joined at the anti-Hoddle barricade by the likes of Tony Blair and Richard Madley. It was inevitable that he would go sooner rather than later, else the country storm the Lancaster Gates.

But what of the rest of the World? Imagine if you will the job of an England 2006 representative when travelling to Asia, the key area for World Cup votes, is asked why Hoddle had to be sacked? How can they explain to a Buddhist that he was sacked for believing in reincarnation? How can they go to the Far East and answer questions about a Sports Minister who said "Anyone who believes that (Reincarnation and the concept of Karma) is living on another planet!". Crass comments that have as much chance to offend as Hoddle’s utterances.

Even in these Christian shores The FA must wonder if any decision could be correct. To find the manager being railed against for these comments by The Sun, a newspaper that airbrushed a wheelchair bound spectator from a photograph in it’s sports pages last year, must have irked. Newspapers and the Media in general have never contributed much to the cause of disability. Too frequently the adjectives "plucky" and "brave" are attributed to people with disability, adding to stigma and the culture of dependence that action groups would rather avoid.

In truth the Disabled have been used as a stick to beat the unpopular England manager with. Had Hoddle been celebrating in Paris in July then these comments would have been swept aside, but he did not and the manager, appointed for his solid public profile, had a chink in his armour that was exploited.

All of which beggars the question who could be England manager if even the most clean cut man in English football is found wanting. Who would want to be? Aside from creating a position within the FA for a man who is sacked when the team experience poor form it is difficult to see how we can ever attempt long term planning at international level if the Manager and his staff are to be hounded out.

Hoddle had to go, there is little doubt about that, but what of his replacement? Bobby Robson and Terry Venebles both were badgered out of office, Graham Taylor pillared. If Kevin Keegan answers the call will the two men who attacked him with a baseball bat years ago reappear with some extra information about the attack to be serialised in the Tabloids? Would the German woman who caught side of Bryan Robson’s member in Frankfurt toilet twelve years ago be able to name her fee? Where will this obsession with breaking down national institutions end?

Your opinions to MichaelWood@Iname.com