Hello. My name is Woy Hodgson. I’m a PE teacher in South London who has had a career in non-league. This is my story into football management after a suspicious call from someone from Sweden. I hope you enjoy the story!
What’s the ultimate job? Well in football, as an English manager, isn’t that being offered the opportunity to manage your country?
With the team considered, I ended up including a few players from previous clubs. Firstly there is Emile Green who was with me at Fulham. He’s a decent wing back so I chose to use him a a second choice left back behind Canales, who’s pretty good! There’s also Ben White who was with me at Manchester United for a while. Those are the two that came up to me to welcome me during out first training session.
As you can see from the list of player, there are a number of tm getting on a bit in terms of age I feel there will be a bit of a transition as we welcome some younger players in, possibly giving a number of debuts to players as the older ones retire.
Joining in May, we don’t have long to wait until we play Holland in the Nations League Semi-Final before continuing with the Euro Qualification games later in the year.
Joining England as manager brings the usual high expectations of a nation based on the 1966 World Cup. Something I think was the worst thing to happen to the English team. Recent years have been better though and England are current holders of the World Cup having beaten Brazil in the final last year! They also won the Euros two years before that and are the current holders of the Nations League! The team actually hasn’t lost a finals competitive match since a World Cup semi-final in 2043. It’s now 2039! So there’s an added expectations that the team is good enough so questions will be asked if I don’t deliver! And that starts with the Nations League next month!
My first match as England manager would be against Holland. After conceding early on, I realised the tactics weren’t working against this Holland side. I made a few changes at half time and it worked a treat.
Despite the poor performance from Axtell in goal, we come from behind to win 5-3 and reach a Nations League final against Spain.
Another high scoring game containing 6 goals, we ended up beating Spain 4-2 in the final to retain the Nations League title. Back to back titles for England and my first one in charge came after only two games! Anybody who remembers Switzerland remembers how badly that went!
After the thrill of winning my first trophy as manager of England, I turn my attention to the remaining qualification games against Wales, Gibraltar Israel and Switzerland.
Up first was Wales. A comfortable and dominant performance saw us win 2-0.
Up next was Gibraltar. Still down at the bottom of the FIFA rankings, we humiliated the part timers 11-0 with most of the squad picking up a goal.
Then there was Israel. Another nation down in the bottom part of the FIFA rankings. This time, we only scored 8-0 with hattricks for Macey and Tipple.
To finish the qualifying campaign, we played three more games. My first defeat came against former employers, Switzerland.
It was an embarrassing one at 0-4 but we bounced back with a 4-0 victory at home to Wales.
Then a record breaking game winning 13-0 against Gibraltar with Étienne Tipple getting EIGHT goals! Since joining, Tipple had been scoring a load of goals. Including his latest haul of 8 goals, he’s scored 16 goals since I started 9 games ago.
Another mention was Lloyd Hughes-Mason. A winger who made his debut against Gibraltar in the 11-0 victory. It’s best to say he’s taken his opportunity! He’s scored 3 goals, 6 assists in the four games he’s played with an average rating of 9.66 and even earning a 10.00 in the first two games!
It does mean we qualify top of the group with the Swiss results the only blip in a relatively easy group. We can now prepare for the finals next summer.
We arranged a few warm up friendlies before the tournament actually started. One against Poland and one against Iran, you know, to get the morale up before the tournament started!
The first game against Poland was a 4-1 victory in Warsaw. Due to injuries, I had to give striker Carlos Mann a debut. One that he took full advantage of and scored a brace! There were also goals from Ben White and, just like taxes and death, there will always be a goal or assist for Lloyd Hughes-Mason!
The other, morale boosting game, was against Iran. That one we won 5-1. Shame to concede but hattrick for Carlos Mann means he’s going in to the tournament feeling like an England regular! He’s made it very hard to drop him for the opening game against Holland.
We did also arrange a last minute friendly against Italy to try out against a decent team. We fielded a full strength squad similar to the one I wanted to start with against Holland. I’m pleased to see that we won 2-0 with a headed goal from centre back Bevis and another one for Carlos Mann.
Now we look ahead to the tournament. A few days remain to train before the opening game against Holland. I’d really like to start strong and add to the Nations League trophy we picked up not too long ago.
As hoped, we started with a win against Holland. It was always going to be the most challenging match of the three over Northern Ireland and Kosovo. It was a narrow 1-0 victory with the goal coming from Christopher Williams. The strikers were marked well and starved of chances. Carlos Mann even failed to score!
We then beat Northern Ireland 3-2 with goals from midfielder Alfie Davidson and a brace from winger Joey Guru. It would be enough to see us progress to the next round but I wanted full points with a win over Kosovo.
And that’s what we got. A brace from Hughes-Mason and another from Guru saw us top the group with 9 points. It was disappointing to concede, especially against Kosovo but I think a bit of complacency crept in with that one.
Topping the group would mean we were drawn against Spain in the second round. We’d recently beaten them in the Nations League final last summer so they will want to take revenge for that so there’s their team talk sorted! But we needed to stay sharp.
It as a narrow game with goals from Macey and Greaves while we conceded once to end the game 2-1 to us.
This set up a quarter final draw against the Czech Republic. The game ended with the same score line with a brace from OAP Ben White whose steady head and experience seems to be the way forward over the excitable younger players who are finding the bigger stage a little bit daunting. Czech Republic did manage to get a goal but we are through to the semi final.
The semi-final saw us face rivals Scotland in a tasty fixture! It goes one of two ways: England win with fans happy to reach a final while Scotland put it down to England being the superior force. The alternative is Scotland win with English fans embarrassed and unable to talk to anybody Scottish for the following 4 years while Scotland declares a bank holiday to allow all citizens to celebrate.
Which reality did you guess? Well I guess it wasn’t the one you’d thought!
A really frustrating game where complacency met a strong and organised under-dog, twinned with e missed penalty by a distraught Carlos Mann saw Scotland win 1-0 to reach the final of the competition.
We quickly returned to the headquarters to dissect what went wrong. We arrived to jeering Scottish supporters. We had to take it on our chins because it was nice to see a team so rubbish for so long final do well. The would also go on to win the whole thing!
So the ultimate job being one that is a real challenge! We were unable to match the win that England had in the last World Cup and Euros with an embarrassing exit in the semi finals at the hands of bitter rivals Scotland.
Now we look ahead to more World Cup qualification games and a Nations League next year.
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