In the next couple of weeks a delegation from the Football Association will set off on a tour of some of the picture-postcard settings of the Cote d'Azur, where the coastline is populated by the haves and the have-yachts, and Roy Hodgson envisages setting up his own mini-version of the Tour de France.
Hodgson will be accompanied by the FA's head of performance services, Dave Reddin, and the director of team operations, Michelle Farrer. Their task will be to find a base for England in the 2016 European Championship and ensure they do not repeat one of their mistakes from the World Cup.
The players had complained in Brazil about the amount of time they were stuck on a bus between hotel and training ground. This time they want a shorter journey between the two camps. “Ideally, one we can cycle to,” Hodgson said. “A magnificent hotel where we can get on our bicycles and cycle off to training.”
In a different time, he might have been accused of being overly presumptuous, given that England are only one game into their qualifying programme. But these days this kind of reconnaissance mission is accepted as the norm.
The FA is leaning towards destinations near Marseille and no one should really suspect they are getting too far ahead of themselves when England have done the hard work of beating Switzerland, and now have a fairly “miserable” run of games, to use the word that crossed Hodgson’s mind as he
considered the rest of Group E.
“It shouldn’t be presumptuous,” said Hodgson. “But after looking at the results this week, I think we underestimate Estonia, Lithuania and Slovenia at our peril. When you see Albania going to Portugal and winning, or Armenia taking the lead in Copenhagen, you know it . . . will take a bit of pain sometimes.”
A manager has to say these things but Hodgson was merely trying to be diplomatic when he and everyone else knows the opposition will, more or less, be playing damage-limitation football. England's next two games are against San Marino and Estonia, and those kind of assignments are not really going to provide hard evidence about whether Jack Wilshere can cope as a defensive midfielder or whether Fabian Delph can hold his own against top international teams.
This is why the FA has approached Germany, Spain, Italy, France and Holland about arranging friendlies over the next couple of years, so the team England beat in Basel on Monday are not the only real challenge before the serious business starts.
“If the players are wise they won’t start jumping for joy too much,” said Hodgson. “They will keep their feet on the ground and say: ‘Yes, we did some good things but . . . we have to be a lot better.’ I used the example with them that towards the end of the game we had lots of opportunities to kill the game off or run the ball into corners and not give it away, and instead we gave Switzerland five or six quite good counterattacking opportunities.”
Hodgson cited the performances of Raheem Sterling, England's best player over the past two games, and not for the first time there was the clear impression he was reluctant to talk him up too much. "Now Liverpool are back in the Champions League . . . That's where you learn most and I'm excited for him."
Guardian Service
