WEEKEND COLUMNISTS Glenn Hoddle rises from the sofa. On the carpet of the Polo Bar in the Royal Berkshire Hotel in Ascot, those long legs take aim for one more pass. “I didn’t realise until later in life that I visualised when I hit passes,” English football’s greatest passer explains.
Within seconds Hoddle has journeyed back to 1981, to Tottenham’s White Hart Lane ground. “If I saw Tony Galvin, on the left wing, and I saw the full-back” – Hoddle places them both somewhere in mid-air in the Polo Bar – “I could see the picture. As I put my head down to hit the ball, even now, to this day, I can see where I’ve got to hit the ball, and I’m visualising Tony. I know where he is, the tunnel’s on that side,” Hoddle laughs excitedly. “I know exactly where I am. I can see it! That was my real gift, my vision to see a picture.”
Hoddle surprises you. Like all managers of England – the newest incumbent, Fabio Capello, will have this still to come – Hoddle was turned into a parody of himself by tabloid newspapers. He was reduced to a few phrases: a humourless born-again Christian, who was sacked nine years ago this week for allegedly saying that disabled people were paying for sins committed in former lives. Hoddle denies saying it. No matter: English football sent him on what amounted to eternal gardening leave. The biggest clubs wouldn’t touch him again.
Now, at 50, at what should be his managerial peak, he has unfinished business. In Ascot he unburdens himself about his years with England as he says he never has before. Nonetheless, he is switching career: Hoddle is creating a football academy for teenage players rejected by their clubs, in order to give them a second chance.
“I’ve always been a deep thinker about the game,” he says. As a schoolboy at Tottenham he studied the great striker Jimmy Greaves playing in a crowded gym. “He was forever looking over his shoulder, before any ball came to him. It was amazing. And as that ball was coming he had that instant picture, where the goal was, and where the defenders were. And then he’d go ‘Tchoooom!’: turn and pop it into the net before you knew it. OK, credit, I picked it up.”
Hoddle was like a French playmaker born by accident on London’s outskirts. He played 53 times for England, but only once, he complains, as playmaker. English football then distrusted creators.
He became a manager, and at 38 got the England job. It seemed the model career. He describes his proudest moment with England, the 0-0 draw with Italy in 1997, as if he’s watching it now on the Polo Bar’s television. Recounting a last-gasp Italian header sailing towards England’s goal, he specifies the angle from which he watched it. “It was the only time in football where I physically felt my heart jump.”
The ball missed, and England made it to the 1998 World Cup, where they lost to Argentina after David Beckham was sent off. A bad memory? “Well, was it? It was a titanic effort. To go down to 10 men – and we nearly pulled it off. We should have done, if the referee had done his job right.” And Hoddle relives Sol Campbell’s disallowed goal in every detail. “They’re fantastic nights. You don’t remember how much money you earned. Those are the things you remember.
“I always wonder, if we had beaten them, what would have happened? Maybe the momentum could have took us all the way. I don’t know. That’s always where there’s the frustration.” For Hoddle, that tournament never ended. If only he’d hired a sports psychologist, he says, England might have beaten Argentina in that fatal penalty shoot-out. “Nine times out of 10 if you miss in shoot-outs it’s between the walk from the halfway line and placing the ball. It’s in your mind.”
Is his sacking a trauma? “My emotion would be purely frustration. My record stands up against anyone in international football.”
Against anyone? “Well, the record is one of the better England manager’s records. And it wasn’t for football reasons that they sacked me. It was ridiculous.”
When he explains that England in recent years have played a too rigid 4-4-2 formation, I suggest it must be frustrating: to think like a top coach but not work as one. Hoddle chuckles: “I’m thinking that myself now. Strange that, you must have read my mind.”
Now he wants to teach teenagers how to visualise, how to pass, and how to work with sports psychologists. He dreamed up the academy while a young club manager. “I could see the 18-year-olds we had to dismiss. My first experience of doing it to six 18-year-olds, when four of them broke down in the office and cried, I thought, ‘Well, this isn’t very nice’.”
He needs £4m from investors to build the academy in southern Spain. Fifteen to 20 per cent of the intake can have playing careers, he believes. When they find clubs, the academy will earn “development fees”. All the students will learn languages and coaching skills.
Hoddle has always wanted to do this. “If I’m honest,” he laughs, “I thought I’d be doing it when I’m about 65.” But England managers don’t get second acts.
