October 27 – Hoddle Arrives

THE year is 1957. In Italy the Treaty of Rome is signed establishing the European Economic Community; in the USA Elvis Presley buys Graceland; and on this day in Hayes, Middlesex, Glenn Hoddle was born.

Before he became a promising young manager, then a mediocre middle-aged manager, and now an unemployed old manager, young Glenn was pretty nifty on the pitch.

Jasper Carrot once said: “I hear Hoddle’s found God. That must have been one hell of a pass.” Such was his skill, ball control and range of passing, you wouldn’t have put even that heavenly move past young Glenn in his pomp.

After coming through the ranks at Tottenham he wowed the White Hart Lane and England fans with his midfield play for 12 years before heading across to the continent to try his luck there.

In a Monaco team managed by Arsene Wenger, Hoddle’s flair and skill were able to thrive, and were appreciated by the whole country when he was voted the best foreign player in France in 1988 as Monaco won the league.

By 1991 Hod was 33 and decided to return to England to become player/manager at lowly second division Swindon Town.

It was here that he achieved his best (and only!) success as a manager by winning the (by now) first division play-offs to take Swindon into the Premiership.

Rather than hang around to see if he could keep them up, Hoddle jumped ship to more fashionable digs at Chelsea where he won nothing.

Perfect preparation for the England job then, which he took up in 1996.

Following one good game where England held the Italians to a 0-0 draw in Rome, Hoddle’s England qualified for the 1998 world cup in France, only to go out to Argentina in the second round. Even Hoddle’s faith healer Eileen Drewery was powerless to stop Beckham losing his cool, and England losing the match.

Infamously, Drewery was not fated to be the most controversial thing about Hoddle’s England tenure. In an interview in The Times Hoddle appeared to suggest disabled people were paying for sins in a previous life. You have to wonder how he even got onto that subject in the first place – wasn’t he supposed to be talking about football?

Anyway, Hoddle didn’t even have to wait until the next life for his comments to go all karma on his ass, and the FA sacked him before he could say ‘reincarnation’.

Hoddle served out his rehabilitation into society on the south coast where he made a good fist of managing Southampton before his spiritual home Spurs came-a-calling.

It was a dream homecoming: the legendary player coming back to lead the club back to the top. Well that was the plan, but sadly for Glenn, Spurs chairman Daniel Levy showed that putting pressure on his managers is ‘just what he does’, and after giving him £11m to spend, promptly sacked him six games into the new season.

A brief spell at Wolves followed for Hoddle, where he failed to get them promoted before walking out on the club days before the start of a new season.

A supremely gifted player, and probably quite a good manager if he could only leave his own ego outside the training ground, Hoddle is famously self-absorbed. Tony Cascarino once said if him: “He was completely besotted with himself. If he had been an ice cream, he would have licked himself.”

Here is Glenn showing he had skills to pay the bills for Spurs against Watford, and pop back tomorrow for more football history shenanegins.

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