A while back I created a hypothesis about The Portsmouth and England number one David James, and today that hypothesis became a full blown theory.

The England goalkeeper earned the nickname 'Calamity James' for his high profile mistakes, for instance when playing for Liverpool in the early '90s (I believe it was against Newcastle) he let a long shot slip straight between his arms, he later blamed the fact that he had being playing a Nintendo games console the night before and that had messed up his ability to perceive depth and distance.

It was around then that I first began formulating my theory; and the other day when I watched England draw to the Czech Republic in the friendly at Wembley that theory became complete, when I saw James inexplicably run out to meet an attacker on the half way line and to somehow get away without conceding a goal.

The theory is this; when David James has a flamboyant attention-grabbing hairstyle i.e. bleached blonde hair or blonde braids or a superman style, he's more prone to the notorious football 'mare', in other words that's when he's most likely to make a calamitous error.

However when the Portsmouth shot-stopper has a 'normal' hairstyle a short back and sides, clean shaven or an afro, he has a blinder. Take today for instance away at Everton, he saved a penalty and made several incredible saves to keep Portsmouth in it; who eventually ran out 3-0 winners.

If there was a formula it would look something like this, where H = hair and F = flamboyant and M = (night)mare it is represented such;

 M=HF²

I call it Roli's Barnet Theory of Culpability

So Fabio Capello take heed, in order to avoid any more embarrassing and potentially costly goalkeeping errors, if need be make sure David James has a haircut or undoes his braids and puts the peroxide bottle away before he pulls on an England shirt. Luckily for the upcoming games against Andorra and Croatia James has done the decent thing and shaved off his wiggly braids and now has a much less attention grabbing 'number one' haircut.

p.s. For all those not familiar in cockney rhyming slang Barnet Affair = Hair.

This year's FA Cup has had its fair share of clichés and romantic parables of the meek taking on the mighty, of the haves falling foul of the have nots. But it was not until this weekend when there where only four games being played at the quarter final stage of the oldest competition in the world, that the BBC finally figured out that if you're going to go on about magic and romance then it is exactly those games which you must show.

This was something that clearly escaped the notice of the BBC programming execs earlier on in the famous competition. Earlier this year on the 5^th of January Queens Park Rangers, a Championship club that has been in financial and football turmoil for a few years now played Chelsea a team that in yesteryear they played regularly and still today regard as their main rivals. Chelsea as everyone is aware has the richest owner of any football club in the world and therefore has the highest spending power, that was of course until Lakshmi Mittal; the fourth richest man on the planet, joined forces with Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore at QPR.

With stories of unrest and in-fighting at Stamford Bridge this was the perfect set up, this was a chance for the "romance of the FA Cup" to rear its glorious head. A victory for QPR would have triggered stories of the ambitions and dreams of the nouvea riche of Shepherds Bush coming back to the big time to take Chelsea's place as the dominant West London team. The two teams had not played each other in a competitive game for over a decade; the last friendly was around half that time ago, this was a game which both sets of supporters eagerly anticipated.

So what then could the BBC have been thinking of when instead of giving us that game; or in fact any other lower league, higher league match ups that they could have given us that day, they gave us Aston Villa versus Manchester United? This was a match that can be seen twice a season and given the dominance of the premiership teams in the cup competitions could happen three or four times in a season.

In fact on that day as well as showing a rare West London derby between QPR and Chelsea they could also have shown Chasetown's game one of the lowest ranked teams ever to ever reach the FA Cup 3^rd round, against this weekend's semi-finalists Cardiff. Chasetown duly took the lead against mighty Cardiff allowing their supporters to dream, they almost went in at half time a goal up, but conceded in the 45^th minute to go in at a respectable one all.

Plucky minnows Chasetown eventually lost the game 3-1 and of course by the time you were watching the highlights on Match Of The Day you were fully aware of that so seeing them go one up wasn't quite the same as seeing it live.

On the same day that the Beeb decided to show Man United's turgid win over Aston Villa, a team of part timers were also trying to steal a few headlines for the next day's Sunday papers. Havant & Waterlooville a team made up of binmen, bricklayers and bus drivers were playing Swansea they earned themselves a draw against a team several professional divisions above them, exactly the type of result that has the magic and romance clichés doing the rounds in the nationals.

So then when Havant & Waterlooville triumphed against Swansea in the replay (a Sky game) the stage was set. This team were the lowest ever ranked team to get this far, they had had to play 11 games to get to the fourth round and they were rewarded with a dream tie against Liverpool at Anfield. Surely this was when Auntie Beeb would pull its finger out, surely this was the moment that the BBC had been waiting for, the FA Cup is the only major domestic football competition it has left in its portfolio and a game like this is great for the ratings. A game like Liverpool v Havant & Waterlooville can keep the cliché writers and the montage directors as busy as bees for weeks.

This should have been the triumphant moment for the BBC the point at which the person who was responsible for paying the FA for the rights to screen the competition was vindicated. But in their infinite stupidity the BBC decided not to screen a game that had never happened in FA Cup history, so millions of viewers were denied seeing the plucky heroes of Havant & Waterlooville take the lead at Anfield, not just once but twice. Havant were eventually beaten 5-2 but of course if we were watching that game live we could have shared in the dream of the travelling supporters, the staff and the players that they might just be part of the biggest upset in FA Cup history. By watching it live you are taking part in that spine tingling, goose bump inducing moment that point at which you realise that even though one set of players earn more in a week than you earn in a year, they are still only human and could lose.

By the time the game was being screened on Match Of The Day it was too late, because instead of watching it and thinking, 'hang on a sec, they could beat Liverpool', you're watching it thinking, 'let's see how they took the lead twice and eventually lost.'

So then back to this weekend when out of design rather than choice BBC viewers were finally given the opportunity to witness some magic, to take their seats on the rollercoaster of emotions that is a lower league, upper league FA Cup clash. Finally we were given the opportunity to see the Davids of Barnsley slay the Chelsea Goliath; finally we were allowed to share in dreams and hopes that weren't ours. Although the way the programming has been handled thus far in the competition I got the distinct impression that if Manchester United were playing Arsenal, they would have shown that instead, perhaps Auntie misses screening live Premiership matches or maybe it's a lack of understanding; but after this weekend I think the BBC finally got the true meaning of FA Cup magic and if you look closely at the document below, you'll see that so have I.

Now and again a football player comes along who is so obviously blessed and touched with genius that fans of all teams and of all countries smile in wonder. Thierry Henry is one of them, Ronaldinho is one of them, Maradona was one of them Pelé was one of them and Paul "Gazza" Gascoigne was one of them.

 Earlier this week hundreds of thousands, if not millions of football fans across the country looked on in sadness as the saga of the fallen idol Paul Gascoigne continued to amaze and sadden. A raging torrent of clichés and sporting parables were used in abundance to describe the lost hero; images of him looking dishevelled and confused dominated the back and front pages. Stories of him wandering round in a daze with two foul mouthed; battery operated plastic parrots under each arm. Taking mountains of cocaine and answering his hotel room door naked to staff circulated in every newspaper, though even in the depths of depression Gazza showed he still had an eye for a good gag as he would get the parrots to say "f**k off" to all and sundry at every available opportunity.

 To many younger football fans all of the fuss surrounding a player that finished his career a decade ago may have seemed misplaced and a little confusing, to people who weren't actually around when he was playing in his prime it might seem a bit odd that the papers are full of tales of his demise.

 In 1990 Gazza achieved sporting immortality by playing a virtuoso role in the World Cup and left a nation with an endearing image of remorse, when tears filled his eyes as he was booked in an electric semi-final against Germany; the booking meant that should England progress he would miss the final. In that semi final the likeable lad from Gateshead achieved near immortality, however Gazza was much more than just that game, he was more than the goal he scored against Arsenal in the 1990 FA Cup semi-final and he was definitely more than the jokes and japes that earned him his "Clown Prince" moniker.

 Gazza's star first shone at Newcastle; in the 1984-85 season he had captained the Magpies in the FA Youth Cup scoring two goals in the final against Watford and was so impressive, that the then manager Jack Charlton picked him later that season for the Tyne-Wear derby against Sunderland. Though Gascoigne didn't come on; he managed to get on the pitch against QPR towards the end of that season and scored on the opening day of the following season, thus cementing his heroic status amongst the black and white supporting Geordies.

 When Gascoigne played, stadiums lit up, this was an era when Maradona was dominant on the world scene and in Gazza people could see similar traits. Both men were built similarly, both could seemingly glue the ball to their feet and both could conjure goals or scoring opportunities out of nothing. By the time Diego Maradona's star began to dim was the point that Paul Gascoigne's really began to shine, he was the star of the 1990 World Cup and even though England were denied a place in the final by the width of a post, Gazza's status as a world class footballer was cemented for ever.

 In 1992 the Roman team Lazio signed Gazza for a fee of £5.5 million and even though he only made 47 appearances scoring 6 goals in the three years he was there, Lazio fans did and still do regard him as a great. The sight of him in the Lazio Rome derby dribbling through the Roma defence laying off the ball to the right surging into the box and scoring a rare headed goal will stay with all Lazio fans; that were lucky enough to see it, forever. Gazza didn't score as many goals as Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard or some of the other modern midfielders, but what he did do was to run at defences drawing defenders into making rash tackles or simply making them look silly. You couldn't class yourself as a football loving human being if watching the great Gascoigne in full flow didn't make your heart beat faster and your day that much better, knowing that you had just witnessed someone special do something special.

 In 1994 Graham Taylor deprived Gary Lineker the chance to equal Sir Bobby Charlton's goal scoring record and Paul Gascoigne of the chance to make amends for the hurt suffered in the previous World Cup. England's failure to qualify was probably felt more acutely by Gascoigne than any other player, to see Gazza play for his country was to understand exactly what made this man-God tick. This could be seen two years later in 1996 as a Glasgow Rangers player, playing for Terry Venables' England at Wembley in the European Championships, Gazza gave us one of those moments against Scotland. He raced into the last third of the pitch to receive the ball played in from the left, Colin Hendry made to cut across him as it looked like Gazza was about to hit a first time volley with his left. Instead Gascoigne showed the touch of a genius as he calmly flicked the ball over the 6'4" defender's head and then drilled the ball home on the half volley with his right foot.

 The joy around the old Wembley was almost too much to bear; grown men wept with happiness as they looked at the genial Geordie lying prone on his back ecstasy etched on his face as he accepted the plaudits from his team mates. Everybody who saw that goal whether it was at the stadium or at home on television, every last one of us knew that we had just witnessed the work of a genius.In 1998 it was Glen Hoddle's turn to deprive Gascoigne what would have been his last hurrah at the World Cup, but unlike Graham Taylor who had committed the same sin through ineptitude, Hoddle's sin was far, far worse. Hoddle had decided to leave one of the biggest footballing talents this country has ever seen at home out of his own free will.

 1998 was the year when football started to change for all to see, Arsene Wenger had come to England to manage Arsenal half way through the previous season. In his first full season he won the Premiership and FA Cup double, observers were amazed at his total tactics, his insistence ..ing the players on a healthy eating, alcohol free diet paid off and Tony Adams publicly stated that the new regime had added two years to his career. The Arsenal team that year was the perfect blend of the old and the new guard, Tony Adams and Paul Merson represented the hard living, hard drinking old boys, whilst Denis Bergkamp and Nicolas Anelka represented the clean living, new breed of athletes.

 So then this represented the perfect time for Gazza to take his final bow, to step up onto that world stage one final time and give it his all, to entertain us with one more amazing run, one more spectacular goal one more immortal moment to cherish forever. Hoddle could have given England and the rest of the world a chance to say goodbye not only to Paul Gascoigne himself, but to his type; the genius that hardly trains, drinks, smokes and eats unhealthy food yet still manages to be the best on the pitch. Hoddle instead decided to take Darren Anderton to the World Cup, a player who not only had been fit for about 4 days in the previous 700, but who plainly couldn't run. Gascoigne's last blight in his roller coaster career was to try and get a game playing for a bitter and twisted England manager who felt that he never got the attention and plaudits he deserved as a player, so therefore would take out this perceived injustice on the most talented England players.

 In a training session Hoddle tried to humiliate David Beckham by claiming that he wasn't good enough to grasp a free kick drill, he publicly stated that Michael Owen; the most natural goal scorer England have had since Gary Lineker, was not a natural goal scorer and then went on to snatch Gazza's last chance of glory away from him. The man who the players called "chocolate", because he felt he was good enough to eat had started Paul Gascoigne on a vicious destructive cycle that came to a heart breaking conclusion earlier this week. That's not to say that it was all (Glenda) Hoddle's fault, it was no secret that Gazza loved a drink and a kebab long before the ex-Chelsea manager came on the scene, but the heartbreak that Gascoigne suffered when being dropped in La Manga for the '98 World Cup was there for all to see. He went on a rampage smashing his hotel room to bits, crying and screaming he; like the rest of us couldn't work out why he had been dropped. It seemed like Hoddle was taking his own frustrations out on Gascoigne and so making sure of one of the biggest ever (non fatal) footballing tragedies; that Paul Gascoigne only ever played in one World Cup. If he was Italian or Brazilian or German he would have played in three. The fact that he did not perhaps went on to shape his future, perhaps if he'd fulfilled the ambition he had been put on this Earth to do perhaps he could have been at peace when the time came to hang up his boots.

 One balmy summer's night in 1998 about a week before that infamous La Manga incident a friend called me on my mobile phone, I had been drinking whisky with another friend round at his flat. I answered the phone and a voice asked me to guess who was at the local pub, seeing as it was a pub where I had seen lots of famous faces (I once saw Jasper Conran talking to Jean-Paul Gaultier) I nonchalantly replied, "I don't know; Michael Jackson?"

"No, f**k that – he replied - it's Paul Gascoigne!" I have never moved as fast as I moved that day; sure enough when I burst through the pub doors there he was, my idol, my hero holding a pint of Guinness and a fag playing the fruit machine.

 I can remember every last detail of that warm summer's night almost ten years ago and I will carry on remembering it for the rest of my life. I'll remember my friend standing in awe behind him playing the fruit machine and saying the barely audible words "I love you". I'll remember another one of my (very drunk) friends slurring at his very big Geordie bouncer not to push. I'll remember Gazza buying me and my friends a drink and talking to us. I'll remember how Chris Evans and ex-England international Trevor Stevens were also there that night but no one paying a blind bit of notice to them. But most of all I'll remember the words he spoke to us, when my friend and I shook his hand and told him that we believed in him and that we knew he would silence the doubters and stick a couple away in the up coming World Cup. He smiled his gap toothed smile at us and in his broad Newcastle accent said; "Aye man, best player in the world me man, best player in the world." And you know what? For one brief, glorious period in history he was; get well soon Gazza, we still do and always will love you.

Sunday 24^th Feburary was meant to be when Chelsea fans could say goodbye to the ghost of Christmas past and look forward to the future. It was supposed to be Avram Grant showing that not only was he capable of matching Jose Mourinho's first twenty nine games in charge, but he could also match his winning mentality.

Instead though it was the Tottenham fans who exorcised past demons; if you had asked any Tottenham fan before Sunday who the last manager to win something with Spurs, you would have been greeted with a look that suggested you had seriously offended the person you were asking. You would have heard strange choking noises emanating from their throats as if the question's answer was sticking like the bone of a Sea Bass that has been devoured too quickly.

The answer you would have got (eventually) was the name of George Graham, the man who won league and European trophies with Arsenal as a player and a manager and then after a financial scandal went to manage the 'other side'.

The ex Real Madrid manager Vicente Del Bosque at the end of the  2002-3 season was sacked the day after winning the league. In his four seasons in charge Del Bosque steered the club to two European Cups, two domestic league titles, a European Super Cup and a World Club Cup. In much the same way that Real Madrid struggled to win anything after sacking their winning manager, so then to Tottenham who suffered the same fate for sacking their winning manager for no other reason than that he was an ex-Arsenal legend.

I remember talking to a Tottenham fan the day after George Graham had led them to league cup success in 1999 and he said;

"He could win the league, the Champions league and the FA Cup for four seasons in a row and I'd still hate him." That fan like many Spurs fans rejoiced in jubilant fashion when the Scott was dismissed two years later, but then of course came nine years of hurt.

Nine years of knowing that the last manager to win anything was not only someone they hated but someone who had steered them to a victory over the old enemy Arsenal. The reasons that the new board (who had just bought the club from Alan Sugar) gave, where that Graham had revealed contents of a meeting that was to remain private. But really Graham was doing nothing out of the ordinary by revealing that the club had little funds to buy players without first selling.

The irony may not have been lost on the Spurs fans because of course they were playing a team who had committed the same sin as they had, by sacking Jose Mourinho Chelsea did not just get rid of a winning manager they got rid of the best manager they've ever had and quite possibly are ever going to have.

'The Special One' blew into town in a blaze of glory he had won the Champions League with a team that had no right to do so, he spoke his mind and rubbed people up the wrong way. He took a team that was in the ascendancy and most likely to achieve success at some point in the future with Claudio Ranieri and made that success happen immediately. Last season Mourinho steered Chelsea to a Carling and FA Cup glory over closest rivals Arsenal and Manchester United respectively.

What Roman Abramovich is finding out is that whilst almost anyone would be able to win lots of games while managing Chelsea winning trophies is a different matter. A winning manager should never be sacked; a winning manager that can win you more trophies in three years than were previously won in the preceding fifty should be given a job for life.

The Russian oligarch has made his first and biggest mistake since taking over at Chelsea, though it's not just Abramovich that is displaying unreasonable impatience. By today's standards Alex Fergusson would have been sacked in his first couple of seasons, it took three years before he won a trophy and in the year he first won the league (two years later) with Manchester United, the team was 10^th out of 22 by November.

On Sunday Chelsea watched as Tottenham's ghost was finally put to rest just as their own demons came home to roost and fans of the Blues will hope that their punishment will end there because if they don't win anything this season it could be a long, long wait for redemption.

Tomorrow evening the new era begins, Don Fabio will lead a Brave New England out onto the Wembley field of dreams against Switzerland. Expect countless clichés about cuckoo clocks and banking (though not in this article), expect a dynamic England trying to recapture the essence of the Italian padlock.

Whatever team the Don puts out it will no doubt be in the mould of previous Capello teams, hopefully this team will take the best attributes of those previous teams and put them all together in an example of effective flowing football. The attributes that are going to most please the fickle England fans will be the defensive brilliance and technical no-how of the original Capello-led Milan team, the guile and determination of the Roma that won the Scudetto and the flair and brilliance of the Beckham-inspired Real Madrid team of last season.

That brings me onto the only thing that will be wrong with what should be an all conquering debut, it will no doubt be a game that sets the country on the long and winding road of wild optimism, all the way to the 2010 World Cup Finals. However the dapper Don has forgotten one thing, one golden rule that if ignored can prove fatal for an England manager.

That rule is don't make a political scapegoat out of David Beckham; Goldenballs was dropped on the premise that he wasn't match fit, Don Fabio said that it was a decision made purely on footballing reasons. Beckham himself has defended the decision of the new man in charge saying that he knows the Italian to be a fair man who would have made his decision based on football and nothing else.

However this is pretty hard to believe when you look a little bit closer at the facts. First of all England will be playing Switzerland ranked 44^th in the FIFA world rankings, even after the debacle of Steve McClaren's, England are still ranked some 32 places above the Swiss. Secondly the game is being played in the middle of the English season; traditionally these games are not as high paced as post-season friendlies as the major players try their best not to get injured and ruin their club season. Thirdly Beckham has been training with Arsenal for the last six weeks, the Gunners are considered to be one of, if not, the fittest team in the country.

So why then has Beckham been dropped? The man who's supplied around 85% of all England's goals before, during and since the World Cup did not deserve to be dropped by McClaren and he definitely did not deserve to be dropped by Capello. It seems that being good looking and an international icon is an offence punishable by omission; past managers (Sven excluded) have all tried to use David Beckham as a political pawn. It is almost like they are saying "Beckham is the biggest star in the squad; therefore I will drop him and show everyone that I'm not afraid to take big decisions."

The Fab has made this mistake before, it was around eight months ago when he announced as boss of Real Madrid that David Beckham would never play for the club again. He said that he should train with the kids because he felt that this would humiliate him into asking for a move, instead Beckham knuckled down, worked hard, got back into the team and his goals and assists inspired them to win the La Liga title.

Most people believe this is the end of Beckham, but the end of Beckham will be when he can no longer run or kick a ball, he will never give up and he will never turn his back on the country he loves, that is what makes him so special. If you believe that being in America will harm his chances because of a lack of genuine competition, think again. David Beckham has never been about pace and dribbling past four players and scoring a goal, he has been about perfect control and pin point accurate passes. Regardless of the quality of his opponents that is something that he will never lose and one day in the not too distant future David Beckham will be back to make Don Fabio an offer he can't refuse.

Because he hasn't won anything, end of.

I was going to leave it at that, as that for me is more than enough of a reason however there seems to be the same growing media clamour as there was for Graham Taylor. The same blind enthusiasm there was for 'Big' Sam Allardyce have we all gone mad? Are our memories that short?

Ask any Arsenal fan if he or she would swap the eleven years of glory and trophies for having more English players in the squad. All of them would say, it would be nice to have more English players in the squad, but I'll take the trophies any day.

Ask any England fan would you rather have England playing well and challenging for major trophies or an English manager? Surely most of them will go for the former; why then are we so blinded by an English manager doing well at a small club as opposed to a foreign manager who's won everything in the game? Fabio Capello has told the world that he'd love to be the England manager, yet here we are debating on whether it should go to Harry Redknapp.

Now don't get me wrong I rate Harry Redknapp highly, I respect what he did at West Ham and I respect what he's doing at Portsmouth. He's got Pompey playing with a swagger, he's got them playing attractive and effective football they are killing off opponents that they would have lost to not too long ago. However, as yet he's won nothing and if Portsmouth go to Arsenal, Liverpool, Man United or Chelsea you know there might be an upset, but you're not surprised when they're beaten.

Perhaps the problem is that just like the people who choose the England manager, the people who write about football in the popular press, know nothing about it. They go on and on about how well certain managers have done at small clubs and put this forward as critieria for the top job in English football. Their readers unable to form opinions for themselves are all too ready to lap it up, so when someone like Steve Mclaren is appointed instead of being up in arms, people are saying 'give him a go, it's his turn'.

At the present moment there is a really big gorilla with a machine gun, standing in the room of tabloid football journalism and everybody's ignoring it. Nobody (bar one reporter at a Manchester City press conference the other day) has acknowledged that the current debacle puts into sharp focus just how well Sven Goran Eriksson did with the England team.

Anybody who has read my past articles; especially on worldcuplatest.com will know that; as much as any heterosexual man can love another man, I love Sven Goran Eriksson. I love how he took over after years of us playing rubbish football and made us good. I love how opposing managers started to refer to England as a technical side after he took over. I love how he engineered a 5-1 win over Germany in Munich. I love how Argentina couldn't beat us under Sven.

I love how he took over from a disastrous qualifying campaign and took us to the World Cup Finals. I love how he took us from 17th in the world rankings (Jan 2001) to 5th place by June 2006. I love the fact that we were the only European team to reach three quarter finals between '02 and '06. I love that only Brazil could match that record on an international level. I love how he achieved the highest qualifying points percentage of ANY England manager. I love the fact he only lost five competitive matches and achieved the top qualifying spot in all three qualifying tournaments.

Most of all I love how he gave me and millions of others an expectation that we could win the World and European Cups and that there is the difference between a manager like Sven and a manager like Harry or Steve or Big Sam. Sven will give you an expectation that you're going to win the World Cup, the others will give you an expectation that you might qualify and you'll probably be beaten easily once you play someone decent.

Sven Goran Eriksson is the only man in the world to have won the double in three different countries, he has won the Italian league and has won the UEFA cup with IFK Gothenburg and the European cup winners cup with Lazio. Now he has steered Manchester City to their best ever start to a season and has got them playing attractive football that has their fans purring with delight; and who would bet against them winning something this season? That is why we got to three quarter finals in a row, that is why we only lost one qualifying game in four and a half years.

Harry Redknapp may one day go on to achieve some of the things that Sven has achieved, but for the moment he hasn't and I don't think it's fair to him or to Portsmouth fans to rip him away while he's stepping up a level. Portsmouth are not in the top four at the moment and yet some might have said that before the season started their squad was stronger than City's. Steve Mclaren ruined everthing Sven did for us, he's put English football back at least five years, going for another nearly man could put us back twenty.

Instead of encouraging the continuation of the culture of rewarding mediocrity and failure, why not simply go for the best man for the job? If that man happens to be Italian, Portuguese, Spanish or Swedish, then so be it perhaps that will spur English managers to take more risks. More risks with their style and with their choice of clubs. Perhaps then one day the best man for the job will be an Englishman and we won't have to sacrifice hope for patriotism.
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© copyright Roli Rivelino

I remember the Northern Ireland team that qualified for the 1982 World Cup Finals, I remember them simply because, as a ten year old I thought that if you were Scottish you had to play for Liverpool and if you were Irish (I didn't know the difference between Southern and Northern) it meant you played for Arsenal. Thus I was really excited by the young whiz kid, Norman Whiteside who I was sure would join the Gunners once the World Cup was over, we already had his team mate Pat Jennings in goal, add to that Liam Brady and David O'Leary and we would be unstoppable.

Imagine my dismay and shock when Whiteside joined Manchester United, I truly believed that he was breaking protocol and being disloyal, it took some explaining by a few adults until I finally accepted that he wasn't bound to us by patronage.

That 1982 team like the team in 58 got to the quarter finals in that '82 squad they had genuine world class players who could have played in any league. Jennings, Whiteside, McIlroy. The current Northern Irish team; with the exception of David Healy play in the lower English leagues and the League of Ireland, making what they almost achieved truly stunning. Back in '82 it was no surprise that a team of their quality not only got through to the finals, but progressed to the quarter finals; further than England.

Lawrie Sanchez who was appointed manager in 2004 after an international record of ten matches without a goal, ended their abysmal run in his first match in charge in a 1-4 loss to Norway, their sixteen match winless streak came to an end in Sanchez' second game in charge a 1-0 victory over Estonia.

That victory set Northern Ireland up for their most remarkable run in history a run that saw them beat Spain, England and Sweden a run that saw them amass 16 points out of 21 in the Euro 2008 qualifying campaign between September 06 and August 07. Then; well then their world was blown apart when Lawrie Sanchez for reasons that will only ever be known to him, deserted Northern Ireland. They subsequently went on to lose two and draw one of their next three games, by the time they got over the shock of losing their best manager in two decades it was too late.

It is hard to escape the fact that with Sanchez Northern Ireland looked like they would qualify; they had beaten the two best teams in the group and were on a high, David Healy could do no wrong and had scored the first hat trick for Northern Ireland in 35 years, the previous being scored by the legendary George Best. Also Healy has scored more Euro qualifying goals than anyone in history, beating Croation Davor Suker's record. Confidence in the camp was the best it had been since Whiteside and co got them to the quarter finals in Spain '82.

So why did Sanchez leave Northern Ireland on the verge of such an incredible achievement? Clearly, only Sanchez can answer that truly; my guess is the lure of a fat Premier League pay check was just too much to resist. Yet if he'd really thought about it then there could have only been one decision to make and that was to stay.

If you look at the top leagues in Europe; Spain, England, Italy, Germany and Holland then you can split teams up into five tiers. The fifth tier are teams that have just come up into the top division, the fourth tier are teams that are just above that, they could easily go down but just as easily finish mid table. The third tier of teams are teams that are comfortably mid table, every now and then they'll finish in the UEFA cup places and if they don't their fans are disappointed. Second tier teams finish consistently in the UEFA cup places but are genuine contenders for Champions League spots and will consistently finish between third and fifth place. Finally the top tier of teams will consistently finish in the top two or three they are more than capable of winning their leagues and are genuine contenders for the Champions League.

With no disrespect to Fulham they are a fourth tier team trying to break into the third tier and I believe that had Sanchez seen out the campaign with Northern Ireland and then gone on to take them to the championships he could be looking at least a tier three job and possibly a tier two. Sanchez who as a player grabbed himself a piece of history by scoring the winning goal against Liverpool in the FA Cup final, whilst playing for massive underdogs Wimbledon, could have led the Northern Irish team to glory. They could have ended up being the 'South Korea' of the tournament, surprising everyone with their tenacity and effectiveness.

Let's not forget that before 2006 Northern Ireland still held the record for being the smallest nation ever to qualify for the World Cup a record that they've held since 1958. Not to be disrespectful of Trinidad & Tobago's efforts in 2006 it is a lot harder to qualify from the European zone than the Central American one.

So in leaving Northern Ireland in the lurch Sanchez has denied, them a chance to qualify for their first major tournament in twenty two years and himself a chance to become a legend in more than just the eyes of old Wimbledon fans. Who knows? The way things are going for him at Fulham at the moment; come the end of the season (or sooner) his decision might yet cause more than just Irish eyes to cry.

Even though next summer has been ruined, last night as I watched England go out of Euro 2008 I felt nothing. I had already accepted we were going out eighteen months ago, when the Football Association made their biggest mistake since appointing Kevin Keegan. They rewarded Steve Mclaren's failure to win the UEFA Cup by giving him the top job. That was the moment they damned England to fail, this is the same Football Association that gave an interview to Alan Curbishley, this is the same Football Association that rewarded Stuart Pearce's attempt to take Manchester City down by giving him the under 21 job.

It's also the same organisation that refused to stand by the best manager England had had since Bobby Robson merely because a downmarket, filth generating, rag calling itself a newspaper decided to embark on a nine month 'sting' on someone who was doing well in the job. Sven Goran Eriksson's only crime was to admit he'd be interested in taking over at Aston Villa after England, should a buy out go ahead and saying he could probably get Beckham to come with him and also repeating what we all know, that Rio Ferdinand can be a bit lazy sometimes.

Brian Barwick was all too quick to jump on the tub thumping band wagon and put all the hopes and dreams of the entire nation in the hands of an English manager. There in lies the problem, let's be honest with ourselves as England supporters; when was the last time an Englishmen led a team to success in the Premiership? When did an Englishman last win the FA Cup? When did an Englishman last win the Carling Cup? Do you see where I'm going with this? I don't even have to bring European cups into this; I remember having a conversation with a friend just before the FA appointed Sven, I said to him; 'only sh*t nations get in foreign managers, you'd never see Brazil or Italy or Germany getting in a foreigner so therefore getting in a foreign manager is like admitting you're sh*t.' He turned round to me and said, 'we are sh*t'.

That day was like a light had been shone on a previously dark bit of my mind that I knew was there, but I had been ignoring for a long time. It must have been a similar thing for Adam Crozier or maybe it wasn't, maybe the fact that he was a Scottish man from outside of football made that decision a lot easier for him to make. Crozier was and is a businessman and he looked at the FA as a business and saw that it was being run badly. The FA's product is football and Crozier could see that in order to get that product back to where it should be we needed to get the best in and the best as far as managers are concerned aint English.

I'd love to see an Englishman taking England to glory in a major tournament, but if that can't happen I want to see someone do it. I was pulling my hair out eighteen months ago when people were debating whether it should be Curbishley Allardyce or Mclaren, none of these men has won anything meaningful in their careers so why were they being touted for the top job? Some idiots even suggested we give it to Stuart Pearce; why not go the whole hog and give it to Bryan Robson? Until an English manager wins something of note then there cannot be an Englishman at the helm, Fabio Capello has come out saying he'd love the job. Capello has won titles in Italy and Spain, he's won the Champions League, he's won Italian cups; this makes him the ideal candidate. Doing 'ever so well' with Bolton, Charlton, West Ham, Portsmouth or any of the other nearly teams, does not and should not ever qualify someone to take the England job.

Hopefully the FA can finally face up to the simple cold hard fact that anytime we get a winner in, we do well and anytime we get a loser in, we do badly, like it or not Steve Mclaren is a loser. Like it or not Sam Allardyce and Harry Redknap are nearly men, if one of them were to win a trophy any trophy I'd be behind them, but until then we need to be looking at people like Capello or Mourinho, someone who can come in and by their mere presence and reputation not to mention their tactical nous, turn good players into world beaters.

Mclaren's appointment put England back eight years to before the appointment of Keegan and if we had fluked it into Euro 2008 the stubborn as a mule FA would have kept Mclaren on, not wanting to be seen as wrong to appoint him in the first place. Thus we would have had him in charge of our World Cup qualifying campaign and that simply would not do, so last night as I watched England go out I smiled to myself and started singing a little song in my head, it went something like; Jo se Mourinho Jo se Mourinho Jo se Mourinho…

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