August 11 – McClaren drops Beckham

MOST England fans were distinctly under whelmed when Steve McClaren was appointed as Sven’s successor as national team boss.

He had after all been an integral part of Sven’s regime which had ultimately come up short – particularly in Germany in 2006 when the squad was clearly unbalanced, and the team never really got going, eventually going out on penalties (of course) after they had limped to the quarter-finals.

McClaren was aware of his image amongst England fans as a poor man’s Sven, and rather than just getting on with the job and dispelling this image by winning matches, McClaren instead opted for a number of PR stunts to try and get the nation on his side.

Sadly for McClaren these stunts were about as convincing as David Cameron and most people saw right through them. A good example was getting PR guru Max Clifford to improve his image. Rarely can the employment of a publicity expert have led to so much bad press.

Then he took on cheeky chappy Terry Venebles as his second in command. This was a blatant attempt by McClaren to try and get some of Venebles’ popularity with England fans to rub off on him. The duo still do not look comfortable working together, and Venebles’ has not helped matters by publicly disagreeing with his boss in his newspaper column.

It is well known that during his reign Sven never once left out, or substituted David Beckham from a competitive match when he was fit (and sometimes when he wasn’t fit).

Here was McClaren’s next target. What better way to distance himself from his old boss by not picking his favourite player. It was on this day in 2006 that McClaren appeared to end Beckham’s England career when he left him out of his first squad, for a friendly against Greece.

Reaction to this move was mixed, although many thought Beckham was still a useful enough player to keep in the squad, but McClaren stood firm â€¦. for a while.

Following some bad results and performances by the England team, and an up-turn in form for Beckham, the England coach showed he was about as decisive as Claudio Ranieri when he buckled and recalled Golden Balls for the prestige friendly against Brazil at the new Wembley.

To no one’s surprise, Beckham played well and provided the cross for John Terry’s goal. Well he does have a bit of a thing about proving people wrong, just ask Fabio Capello.

Watch Beckham mark his comeback with a trademark free kick as Terry scores for England: