Mark Watson the Comedian

I’m going to quickly break off from the usual comfortable irrelevance of this blog and enlist your support in ensuring that the newly vacant post of England football manager goes to the right person.

Even if you don’t follow football, you might well be aware that Fabio Capello, Italian coach and owner of a thousand forehead creases, has stepped down from a job he only ever seemed to hold with a certain reluctance in the first place. His reign, after a bright start, did not turn out to be much of a success; the tenure of his predecessor Steve McClaren was a disaster. Before that, Sven-Goran Eriksson led the team to the halfway-respectable returns of two quarter-final appearances, but his reputation was sullied by his habit of reacting to crises on the field by flapping his hands ineffectually and looking slightly cross like a grandfather seeing weeds encroaching on his rockery, rather than with aggressive leadership. Also, he married that crazy Italian lady. Not football-related, but a sign of tactical weakness all the same.

All in all it’s been some while since we had a leader capable of restoring England’s glory days, or rather day (July 30, 1966). There are high hopes that Harry Redknapp, the ‘people’s choice’, will now assume power. He’s the highest-rated English-born manager around. But – again, this might be familiar from the news – he’s only just walked free from accusations of financial misdemeanour. He was cleared, but he has been involved in controversy of this kind before. It’s not relevant to his suitability for the job, but, well, it’s the sort of thing that might make the Football Association nervous, in a time when the game’s reputation with the general public is so low.

There is an alternative.

Lest we forget, my brother Paul set out to become the world’s youngest international football coach a couple of years ago, and succeeded. He took his Micronesian charges, from the island of Pohnpei, to their first ever win – and away from home at that. All this is related in his book Up Pohnpei, which of course was released last week.
In relative terms, the achievement of securing a win for a team which previously did not exist is roughly equivalent to winning a trophy for England, who already have some big advantages (an existing team, football pitches, not the world’s 3rd highest rainfall, etc).

He’s got no history in the game here, so no grudges, no club loyalties to worry about. He has – as I say – already managed at international level, which is something Redknapp can’t claim, nor many of the other possible candidates. And where figures like Capello are dismissed as mercenaries, on huge salaries and out of touch with the common man, Paul has indicated to me that he would do the job for around £25k a year: a saving of around £5.975 million on Capello. And he could hardly be more in touch with the common man – he even lives in a flatshare.

The case for Paul’s accession to the post of England manager is so overwhelming that it’s something of a surprise he wasn’t mentioned much in the press this morning (they chose to concentrate on Redknapp). Nonetheless, a campaign on Twitter has begun, using the hashtag #watsonforEnglandmanager, and already literally tens of people have put their support behind it. If you are on Twitter it’s time to jump on the only bandwagon which can guarantee us World Cup glory in 2014. If not, use whatever other influence you have to make this happen.

My brother as England boss: it’s pretty much a no-brainer.

Oh, also – if you are anywhere near Daunt Books, on Fulham Road, London at 6.30, Paul’s book is being launched there and then this evening. I mean, it’s quite a coincidence, the timing. You almost wonder if we could somehow have stage-managed the sacking of the England boss purely to get publicity for the book release. But there’s no way I could do that, is there?

IS THERE?

All I can say is, there will be more casualties unless our reasonable demand, to make Paul the most powerful man in English football, is met. Thank you.