In January 2016, Roy Hodgson was honoured by the University of York. As part of the celebration, Hodgson addressed an audience of students gathered before him, offering them some wisdom for their lives ahead, presumably exhibiting the leadership of a football manager:
If there's one thing I would say to you, and it's something we try to preach to our football players, have no fear. You have got to believe in yourself.
Be prepared to take chances because the worst that could happen is you might have to accept thatit didn't work out, this challenge you took, and you have to go back to the drawing board and wait for the next chance to come along.
The great truth in that statement is the line "the worst that could happen is you might have to accept that it didn't work out". This is Hodgson writ large. He sees football as a kind of cosmic force of events over which he can exert no control; a series of fated convergences.
This has been evident in each of his previous major tournament failures with England.
Here's what he said after the penalty shoot-out defeat to Italy in Euro 2012, a game utterly dominated by Andrea Pirlo. Rather than pick an aggressive English team to close down Pirlo, England sat deep and allowed him the ball, settling for a penalty shoot-out from the opening minute, allowing Hodgson the sweet exculpation of an opponent's genius:
The cool, calculated way Pirlo chipped it [the penalty in the shoot-out], that is something you have or you don't have as a player.
His quotes after the miserable group stage World Cup exit two years later were equally deserving of centre-stage in the theatre of bullshit:
The facts suggest tournaments are decided on results. If you survive the tournament it means you've played well and if you don't it means you've played badly.
The football truth is probably in between those two scenarios. Had the ball not skidded of Gerrard's head and played Suarez onside, had we gone on to win that game 2-1, had we then gone on to beat Costa Rica, we might have been talking about a great tournament.
If you can blame luck, you can't blame yourself.
It has manifested itself once again following last night's extraordinarily inept defeat to Iceland, with a prepared resignation speech making reference to the fact that "these things happen".
It suits Hodgson to believe that the universe moves in its own mysterious way, that a ball skidding off a midfielder's head is the apogee of a manifest destiny that cannot be altered by any kind of tactical plan or brave mindset.
This idea that circumstances are entirely beyond his, or any mortal's control is a state of crisis, but that's what Hodgson wants. Whereas Jose Mourinho manufactures a crisis like a monarchy - to prove their worth, in the 'if there's a war, we are able to protect you' sense - Roy uses such a scenario to exhibit the great limits of human beings. Leaders need a crisis to prove their worth; Hodgson needs a crisis to prove everyone's limitations, thereby obscuring his own.
This preposterous Daily Mail puff piece entered the realm of opinion in writing that Hodgson "is not, I don't think, a believer in the divine right of monarchs". This is surprising, as Hodgson is a staunch believer in an entrenched hierarchy in football. To imagine otherwise might put pressure on Hodgson to achieve something and break through them, and that would be rather bothersome for his reputation.
And if we are all doomed to cruel circumstance, there is no point in hope or expectation. This is how Hodgson goes about his business: the lowering of expectation is a necessary part of his management. Hodgson getting the England job following the failures of the Golden Generation should hang in the Tate under the title 'Arch Roy Hodgson'.
Hodgson's ability to lower expectation is magnificent. In another life he would have been a financial regulator, telling the world that the credit rating of these loans were not as good as folk made out, and would have stopped the property bubble from inflating in the first place.
Instead, as the economy collapsed, he was tanking at Liverpool. After his second game in charge - a 3-0 collapse away to Manchester City in which Javier Mascherano refused to play - Hodgson did an interview with Sky Sports in which he laughed at the prospect of Liverpool winning the league in response to a question from former Everton player Andy Gray.
No wonder Hodgson was chased out of the club, renowned as perhaps their worst manager in history. Liverpool are a northern club hewn from its people's ability to defy the expectations of London. This was London coming to town and laughing in their faces.
Hodgson is a mid-table manager who has ascended to the English job by being a company man. Whereas once he was welded to his 'two banks of four', he has proved flexible in the England job, in order to stay alive.
Take two years ago. In 2014, he was encouraged to follow the example of Liverpool, who had almost won the league with Sturridge, Henderson, Sterling and Steven Gerrard.
Amid headlines speculating if Hodgson was too cautious to trust youth (and some that claimed he was too proud to emulate Liverpool) Roy decided to prove he was capable of both: he picked Sturridge, Sterling, Henderson and Ross Barkley, along with Steven Gerrard. Yet he couldn't navigate this supposed humility with his own tactics, and butchered its execution.
At Liverpool, Brendan Rodgers protected Steven Gerrard by putting Jordan Henderson and Phillippe Coutinho ten yards ahead of him, with Suarez, Sterling and Sturridge pressing the opposition defence. Hodgson played something closer to a 4-2-3-1, with Henderson alongside Gerrard in a side that couldn't press as intensely in the stifling heat of Manaus.
Gerrard was ultimately overwhelmed by the lack of protection ahead of him; perhaps this lack of protection would not have left England depending on a ball not skidding off Gerrard's head, but then that would rob Hodgson of an excuse.
In the opening game of the tournament against Russia, the extent of his appeasement was borne out again. He followed the clamour to select Jamie Vardy and Marcus Rashford in the squad. He did that, but once again failed to navigate his willingness to favour others with his own caution. Against Russia - who are perhaps the worst team we've seen in the tournament - he panicked and picked just one striker - Harry Kane - and had him taking corners.
Hodgson's commitment to two banks of four is no longer a reality: he is committed to keeping everyone happy at the expense of his tactics. At this level, however, Hodgson has found there are too many people to keep happy, and this is how his team ended up playing; a kind of footballing work of modernist art. They faced a side with a high line, left Jamie Vardy on the bench for an hour and failed to get in behind them:
#ENG ball circulation in a neat flow, except that there's no passing at all in the zone that matters.#Kane #Alli pic.twitter.com/6NWNdqimOT
— 11tegen11 (@11tegen11) June 27, 2016
Last night, Hodgson's decisions beggared belief. If the Slovakia game had any value, it was to tell Hodgson that Jack Wilshire should not play for the rest of the tournament. In spite of that, Wilshire came on at half-time. Marcus Rashford was left warming up on the touchline until the final four minutes.
Hodgson then didn't as much shuffle off his mortal coil as run off stage like an Elizabethan man delivering a letter to Hamlet to tell him something is rotten in the State of Denmark.
Some argue that Hodgson was dignified in his exit, but this is another example of Hodgson's skill in being misread by vast amounts of people. To guide a nation to their worst major tournament defeat in a generation while collecting £3.5 million per year, only to dodge any tough questions or a grilling for such staggering underachievement is cowardly.
He eventually faced the media today, as he was "anxious to make sure no one in the room could accuse him of being afraid to face the media". Contrary to his advice to students, and the way he has set out his teams, Hodgson does harbour some fear.
Some will see Hodgson's abdication as the last stand of a principled man. In reality, it was the last act of a man who has run out of principles to compromise.
This post was originally published on June 12th, and updated on June 28th to reflect the latest in Roy Hodgson's failings.
