15: Roy Hodgson On The Liverpool Job He Shouldn't Have Taken

From The Jeff Stelling Show · 1:17:05

Show by The Jeff Stelling Show

Roy Hodgson does not think Liverpool treated him badly. He says so plainly — no antipathy toward the club, no sense of being hard done by, and a clear view that the problem was his own handling of it.What he does think is that the appointment should never have been made. Kenny Dalglish was there, a Liverpool legend, very happy to take the job. If the people who hired Hodgson had been a bit wiser, or a bit more calculating, he says they’d have concluded that whatever they thought of him, this one had to go to Kenny.He tells Jeff Stelling it wasn’t a happy club to walk into. The ownership was under criticism, and Rafa Benítez - the man he was replacing - was still popular with supporters.His own mistake, as he sees it: he arrived on a high. Finland had gone well. Fulham had gone extremely well. It had been a long run of nothing but pats on the back, and he assumed the same approach would simply transfer. He says now it’s dangerous to take a job on a high, and that he should have thought it through far more carefully - probably starting with winning the fans round before asking them for patience.On the squad he inherited: Gerrard and Carragher aside, he says they weren’t the household names you’d expect at Liverpool, and that Fernando Torres was no longer the Torres of previous seasons. He doesn’t think seventh was nailed on.And on Dalglish, who replaced him and won the League Cup: no complaint at all.This is the full episode. Fifty years of management, four national teams and more than a thousand club games - and a career Roy Hodgson says he never once saw coming.He didn’t make it as a player. He was 28, back from two years in South Africa, with coaching badges and no idea what to do next. Then a friend who’d gone to Sweden recommended him for a job at a club that had exhausted every other option, and he won the league in his first season with fifteen players and a handball coach as his assistant.Five league titles in Sweden and Norway followed, before English football had any idea who he was. Then Switzerland, who hadn’t reached a World Cup since 1954, and who he took to one. Then Inter Milan, where a mistranslated word made the front page of the Gazzetta and he discovered that twelve years in Scandinavia had prepared him for none of it.He talks about Fulham - mathematically relegated with three games to play and somehow surviving, then a European final two seasons later, beating four clubs who’d come down from the Champions League on the way. About Crystal Palace, Wilfried Zaha, and being the oldest manager in the Premier League at 77. About the England job: forty-odd qualifiers and three defeats, and what happened every time he arrived at a tournament. About Iceland, ten years on, and why he no longer lets it bother him the way it did.And about where he is now. He’s a UEFA observer. Keith Andrews invites him to Brentford’s training sessions and he sits in on their team meetings. Last season he got a call out of the blue asking him to take Bristol City’s last seven games, at 79, and he said yes - because he’s always loved being on a training pitch with players.It was six magical weeks, he says. And now he misses it.He’d jump at another call. He just doesn’t think one is coming.🎧 Enjoying the show? Follow The Jeff Stelling Show wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode, and leave us a rating and review - it really helps new listeners find us.🚨 WIN money-can't-buy sporting experiences at OLBG Prizes18+ | UK Entrants Only | T&Cs apply | Free Entry Route Available Enter at 👉 https://www.olbgprizes.com/stelling#RoyHodgson #Liverpool #LFC #KennyDalglish #England #JeffStelling

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