Roy Hodgson On Inter Milan, Brian Clough’s “Criticism” & Club Vs Country

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2:08Welcome to the Rest is Football with me, Gary Ennicka. I'm joined by a very special guest today, and I've been looking through his career. and if I did a proper introduction and went through the entirety of it, it might take more time than we possibly have. So I will do nothing more than introduce him by his name. Roy Hodgson, thank you very much for joining me and coming to my home. Pleasure, Gary. How are you, his first question? Oh, good, thank you very well. You're looking well. Thank you. Because we were all a little bit worried towards the last few days at Crystal Palace. You were in hospital, but you're all fine.

2:43Yeah, it's one of those incidents, I suppose, that can occur. But luckily that would pass very quickly and I'm fine. Are you missing being involved, day-to-day involvement in the game of football? It's a hard question, isn't it? Because after you've been in it so long, whenever you actually stop with it, the only honest answer is, yeah, I miss it. But of course, you miss certain parts. That's the thing if you're totally honest. You don't miss it all. You miss the fine parts. I imagine there are aspects that you really don't miss at all. Exactly. So, no, and anyway, I came to terms with stopping even two years before I actually did.

3:17So I got two extra years I wasn't even counting on. So in my mind, I think when I stopped at Paris in 2021, I think that was probably coming back a couple of times was, in my opinion, sort of doing people a favor. We're actually talking on deadline day. It's the Monday. The transfer window closes later tonight. by the time this goes out people will know who's moved and where is deadline day one of the days that you miss or you definitely don't miss i always thought it was overhyped i think it still is extremely overhyped you know i mean i heard someone today on sky sports this morning wishing one of the reporters happy deadline day i mean that seems to be that seems to be the level of stupidity we've reached as far i think the whole idea is a strange one because basically you know when the season ends, what players you need, you know really pretty much what they're going to cost.

4:13And it sometimes seems to be an enormously long, drawn-out process and coming right down to the wire, there's a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety for an awful lot of people, which I'd like to see diminish at least, even if it would probably never go away because people are always looking to get a bargain and they work on the basis. If we leave it to the last minute, we'll get our way a bit cheaper. One thing I would say is that it seems odd that it carries on a couple of weeks after the start of the season. I know that was to align with Europe, but now Europe is playing games at the same time. I think it makes sense to do it before the start of the season.

4:49How frustrating is it as a manager when you've got a squad and you're not quite sure whether you're going to lose one or two players from it? It must be difficult to plan. Yeah, absolutely. It is difficult to plan. And what's more, you've also got the hopes of signings and the people you'd like to see come, but there's no guarantee that they're going to be arriving. And probably what you do know with more certainty is who's going to go. And of course, you always see managers saying, if we can get the replacement in, if we can get someone signed quickly enough. But there are so many managers today losing players on the very last day of the transfer window.

5:31They've got virtually no chance. replacing them basically unless they find some free transfer somewhere. How involved are coaches and stroke managers in the final day of the transfer window? Do they actually get a... I mean, I presume they're involved obviously in the talks before that, but on the final day, are you constantly waiting on the phone? No, no. I think, you know, if one is to be honest in that respect, The days really when the manager was, you know, the managers that we both know from our time earlier in football, they were people who definitely did make big decisions. And they would ring up each other and say, I will give you so much money for the player.

6:17And the other guy would say, that's not enough or we'll do a deal. Those days are long gone now. Everything's done at a much more of a commercial level, a board level. one hopes that the manager is very much involved in the conversations one hopes the manager is kept informed and one hopes that the manager's opinions about what players should be coming and going are taken into account but unfortunately it is a big business and your desire as we've seen with Mark Gay which I fully understand I mean it's an incredible piece of your jigsaw puzzle and your team to lose but there are the two sides if the club doesn't sell him now then they're going to lose an enormous sum of money so it's that balance all the time and you know people team they like to play the media on that dichotomy here's the wicked club making money selling the poor manager's player and here's the poor manager losing players that will help him win full matches it's just part of the game really it's not going to go away there's no question of that and if you go into a club today as a manager or head coach or whatever they like to call you, thinking that I'm going to make all the decisions when it comes to who comes to the club, how much we pay them, who goes, what the price is.

7:33You're dreaming, really. You just hope to get a good relationship with the people running the club and that they listen and take some heed to what you're saying. I mean, you've been around, very experienced. What's your general experience of that? Do they listen to you, by and large? or has that changed over the years with the fact that you're more experienced and seen perhaps with greater wisdom? I mean, I came back to England really. I mean, after that very early Bristol City spell where the club went into liquidation anyway, it survived because they allowed it to start under a new name, i.e.

8:12Bristol City 1982. But the Bristol City that existed, that we joined, Bob Howland, that went. So forget that time because there was no chance of really signing anybody then unless it was a free transfer or someone who could be loaned to us. But coming back to England in 97 to join Blackburn with Jack Walker, that was a very easy thing in a way. I mean, Jack, that was very much a question of who would you like to sign and can we get them and so on. And basically there wasn't that much difference that I don't think. Jack was always telling me to spend more money. I didn't want to spend any money because I didn't see the players I wanted.

8:52Was it you that told him to sell Alan Shearer? No, no. Alan went before me. No, no. The first problem we had was we had trouble keeping players. The first one was Graham Lassau, then Colin Hendry and Tim Shearwood. They were the three that wanted to move on. Jack didn't want to go. So it was no question that we want them to go for the money. They weren't going to go. they left eventually all three because they made it clear we don't want to be in Blackburn anymore we want to move on if you move from there to the other clubs I've worked at it's been probably cut and mouse stuff from the owners Jeremy Peace who was very good very good owner I thought but signing players there I remember the Shane Long one that went to the wire on deadline day we thought it had all been done we thought he got it all sorted out which club is this?

9:40West Brom sorry West Brom with Fulham it was okay Al-Faiz really left it to us. He had a very simple philosophy. Not initially. Initially, he was wary of everything we said because I think he had a few problems with other managers he'd had in the past. He mistrusted their relationship with agents and whether there was some sort of skullduggery. But when he got to accept Alistair Wackintosh and I, that wasn't the way we were, we were trying to get players into the cover. He was very, very good about it. He used to have a very simple, not philosophy, but a very simple maxim, which was, your balls are on the line, don't waste my money, and away we go.

10:21You make a mistake, the player comes in, it's no good. That's up to you. You'll be gone. And then you go to Crystal Palace, of course, where Steve Parrish is very, very good on that side of things. He's run the club really on a sort of a shoestring, tightrope, and so on. So basically speaking, it's only been the last couple of years where buying players has really come into the equation. It was always about possibly selling them and can we keep them? So I've been fortunate. I've not really been in any maelstroms caught between owner and manager. I've been lucky. Which is good because you've had such a long career.

11:03Where did your love of football come from, Roy? It's always a good question, that one, isn't it? I can't point to anyone in the family or my father. My father took me to football very early on. From the age of five or six, we would walk to Sellhurst Park from where we lived in West Croydon. So I was introduced to it in that way. But basically, it came, I think, from the modders of the time, really. Growing up at that time as a schoolboy in, what would it be, I suppose, mid-50s through to the mid-60s. football, that was it. You went to school. If you like sport, well, I did like sport, of course, you had two choices.

11:44You played football in the winter and then it became too hot to play. So you played cricket. No one ever said to you in those days, well, how do you fancy a bit of tennis or basketball interest you or any thoughts on volleyball? There were never any questions really. So we all grew up, if we enjoyed the sport and had any sort of talent at it, hoping that one day we will become players. Were those your aspirations that you wanted to be? Yeah. You played non-league and you... Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I didn't have anything like a really successful playing career. Of course not. What was missing, Roy?

12:21If you were going to look at you as a possible signing, what was missing? Why wouldn't you have signed yourself? A bit of everything I would say. So he didn't have the pace. Really wasn't strong enough. I didn't think. If I had anything, it was some sort of technical ability and intelligence. And intelligence. That sort of thing. So it got me through the night, got me to South Africa to play for a couple of years, but it was never going to stop me. What was that? Because that was during the apartheid time. It was interesting, yeah. It was interesting because every year they did a deal. Again, it's hard for people to understand this with football players today, but players in the top division then, they were quite happy to go to South Africa to play for a couple of months to earn a bit of extra money during the summer.

13:05And I'm not talking about any of you. I mean, Frank Worthington, you remember one of your guys. Frank was my hero. Frank Worthington was out there. I knew Frank well from the time. Frank Worthington was out there, Gary Sprake, Jordy Armstrong came out. I mean, all these type of players came out to boost teams during that short period of time. And then often, apart from that, it was a mixture. It was a mixture of quite a few South Americans because there were some South American coaches, some of whom were quite young and very talented, some towards the end of their career. And then there was quite a few English players who'd been quite famous.

13:39Were you aware at the time of the apartheid issues and what was going on? Yeah, because sport was very much involved in that, wasn't it? Well, we played in Pretoria, which was quite, you know, one of the very big townships in Mammalodi is in Pretoria. They weren't allowed anywhere near the ground. So, I mean, they wanted to. You'd see them on the outskirts trying to peer through. They could have had their own football. Their own football was strong. How did that make you feel? Well, I don't know. I mean, it should have made me feel a lot different to the way I did feel. I was just selfishly pursuing a football career, really, playing at the highest level at that time I could play at, enjoying the games and not really being too much involved in anything political, which was perhaps just as well, because there's nothing we could have done about it.

14:33But I mean, well, those famous players I'm talking about, the first division, Derek Dugan and people like that, they might have come in for some criticism. I don't know, you know, politically, but certainly at the level I was at, it was never any question. When did you start to think, it's not going to happen for me on the field? What about off the field, coaching? Well, I think I owe that to Bob Houghton, really, who was, pardon me, Bob Houghton. We were very, very close. And he took an interest very early on. And we were like joined at the hip for a period of time. And, you know, his interest provoked my interest.

15:10We started in those days, the coaching badges were very simple. You know, there was a preliminary one. And it wasn't too difficult to get onto that, really, if you could kick the ball and whatever. So it starts there. And then after a period of time, you try to get onto what was the four badge course, which was the one which could really give you some sort of platform into serious professional football. And it was Bob all along. I think Bob was the youngest full badge coach at the age of about 26. And we were doing it in tandem, of course, with playing, but I think we probably did realise. And then another thing that Bob did, I mean, he'd taken himself off to teachers' training college to be a PE teacher, to maintain, if you like, the best thing you can do in terms of The closer you get to coaching is PE teaching in England at that time.

15:55It was only football and cricket, which we both could play. And, I mean, even he pushed me in that direction as well. So I was very fortunate that I still pushed. So you did some teaching in schools? I did. I did six months in England. Sorry, not six months, a term. Yeah, a term. I taught at a public school, amazingly enough, a very posh one. Very close to where I ended up training, give you that beckham called allayances it was like uh parents who wanted to get their kids into dullage college and the kids maybe didn't quite make it they'd send them to allayances instead which was just down the road but i gave up gave that up after one term to go and play football for two years in south africa and then when i came back i did a year uh and strangely enough half of that year was in a school also in dullage but in the less posh part of dullage where the school where the children were very different to the public schools i've been teaching a couple years earlier.

16:50And so you get into coaching and then it happens for you in Sweden of all places. How did that transpire? Again, I think it was Bob Houghton. It was Bob, yeah. He'd taken me to South Africa initially, although we split up. He didn't stay very long in the club. So I did most of my time there on my own, as it were. He came back to England and went with Bob Robson to work at Ipswich for a while with him as one of his staff. And from there, he got this chance to go to Malmö in Sweden, which was in 1974, which was a good offer, a good chance for him, very young. But it was a huge success. They win the league in the first year.

17:33In the second year, they do the double. And then, because he'd done so well, so young, because normally the English coaches that had gone to Sweden had been recommended by the FA, and they were often quite famous English coaches, but not the type that the Swedes maybe were looking for. So he put my name forward for this Team Harmstad and after a lot of... They contacted me about seven or eight months before they finally contacted me again. I think they'd gone to every Swedish coach that existed and offered them the job, but they'd all turned it down and came back to me and that's why I was able to start in 76.

18:13Yeah, and you perform what they still call to this day some kind of miracle. It was a bit of a Leicester City, wasn't it? Yeah, at a lesser level, you can't compare the Al Svenskan with the Premier League. But yeah, I mean, every newspaper in the country before the season started had us relegated because they'd only survived on goal difference the year before and they'd lost some players. So it was an incredible turnaround. But we were lucky, Bob and I, in a way that there was still quite a lot of tactical naivety around. We were tactically naive as well, basically. but it was a time when the German football dominated the world and it was very simple sweeper, man to man so if you did something which wasn't sweeper and man to man you could cause havoc it took him a while to work it out so you're working with Bob?

19:03no, no you're on your own there, no, just to make it clear he was at Malmo and I was at Halmstad he left after the European Cup final in 79 to go and join a club in Greece which only lasted a very short time and he went to Bristol City and then from there he called me to go and help him as his assistant at Bristol City which I did in 1980 So what's it like then? You're in Scandinavia there you're an Englishman you're coaching young Swedish players by and large I would imagine Some older than me Some were older because you were so young Was there a degree of difficulty there? Were they going well what is this?

19:43We don't know this guy. He's not done much. And then he wants to change us. We all play man to man and sweepers. What's going on? Was it difficult? Well, funnily enough, it wasn't, but it should have been. When you asked that question, I think back and ask myself, how could it have gone so smoothly, really? How did we not face the problems? I mean, it didn't seem to me there was any real questions in that respect. I mean, they took everything on board. And I think our naivety was naivety in the sense that we knew what we knew. We weren't so tactically astute that we knew everything there is to know.

20:20But what we did know is what we'd been taught by the FA. We knew about width in attack, depth in defense, all these type of things. We knew about the things we talk about today, being compact, pushing up, pressing from the phone. So things never change, whatever they've done. We knew all those things there. and we believed in them and we believed we could coach them and we did and we coached it almost roughshod over people there was no question like lads what do you think when their goalkeeper throws the ball to the fullback are we going to push in on him or are we going to sit back there was no question this is what we're going to do when the ball goes there that's what you're going to do and that's the trigger for you and you make certain you get in there and when the ball gets transferred we're all going to do this and basically we worked on it and worked on it and people just seemed to accept it.

21:07In the end, they accepted it very much as their own as the Swedes have now, really. I mean, it amuses me when people talk about high pressing. One story I can tell you is when Brian Clough came to watch a game between the number one and two teams in the country in 1979. Halmstead were actually top of the table and we were playing an away game at Malmo who were second and everyone expected them, of course, to leapfrog us because they were a bigger club. And Ryan Clough came to watch the game before the final to, you know, watch his coming opponents, which is always a bit surprising in a way because he didn't, Ryan didn't do those things that often.

21:46But anyway, the game ended nil-nil. In those days, the offside, I'm sorry about all the assides, but the offside law was different then. It was. You ran offside, you've offside. You're offside, but it doesn't matter if the ball's coming out or went to third or not. So pushing up was easier. And both of us pushed up enormously. And after the game, a journalist asked Brian Clough right you know you've seen Malmo what did you think of the game today he said I didn't see a game today and of course the silence and I said well what do you mean he said it wasn't a game of football he said I just saw 20 guys around the centre circle and if I'd have thrown a hand grenade on the pitch I'd have killed them all and that made massive headlines you can imagine but that shows really how it was and you know the high press wasn't invented in the last few years was it no it's always been there the thing about the high press it's very simple it's not difficult as a coach to say here's my philosophy I want a high press that's not difficult that you know it's not hard to persuade front players that go after that because you might get the ball back you haven't got to wait for ages so it's easy to sell but the hard thing to sell is your back players coming that high up the field and holding that line now that's the hard thing and if you don't do that you can forget the high press you can't have both unfortunately we'd love to I mean even you look at a team like Barcelona now they're taking it to absolute extremes of the high line they don't even drop when they've not got the balls but they get caught well they will they can't not and they do they do sometimes get I mean the good thing is they score a lot of goals so they can afford to let a couple in they also have produced players and bought players who've all got as much pace as any forwards that they come across but now that wasn't the case in the times we had to be, you know, we had classic defenders.

23:33They could kick it, they could hit it, they could challenge, but they couldn't outrun wingers. Their idea with a fast winger would be make sure you get your tackle in early on and try and put him on the running track so he doesn't come back for the second time. It holds you in high esteem in Sweden. I think it was in the corner of the ground called Roy's Horner which means corner which when I read it I thought hello, what's going on here so do you still go back at all? I've gone back a couple of times they've asked me to come back I went back recently for some little award went to Halmstad there's a wall where they put certain figures from the Halmstad history on this particular wall I've gone back for those two things but no I don't go back often albeit that my son of course is married to a Swedish girl from Malmö so we do see them from time to time there.

24:31Let's take a little break and then we'll discuss more of all things football when we come back. Evening. Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry I think there's been a mistake I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice. I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com.

25:10Welcome back to The Rest is Football with me, Gary Lineker, and today Roy Hodgson, who's joined us. What's the biggest difference between international football and clubs? club management? I think the responsibility is one of the factors and also the factors in the attachment you are to some extent an emissary for your country. You're a diplomat. You're expected to in some way represent the country in a way that doesn't bring any discredit to the country. I mean that's an aspect with a club side you're loved or hated or whatever but you're performing for a very tight-knit local group really, you know, however, even Man United, I mean, yes, everyone loves Man United all around the world, but your real work is in the Manchester area.

25:59In the national team, of course, you've got everyone's thoughts and opinions and interests. And in terms of the work, I think it was better in many ways, because especially in the beginning when there was a little bit more time, it got worse. Because, you know, in Sweden, I seem to have much more time to coach the players. And that diminished by the time I got to Finland. And it diminished even further by the time I got to England. Because the league matches were taking precedent. Players were playing Sunday night. You used to get more time. In fact, didn't you change things and used to bring players in to train for the national team, even though they were still in the club season?

26:41Yep. With Switzerland, we were able to do that. They gave me that opportunity for a period of about, I think we must have done it, four or five months at least. once a week the players would come and join us for two days on a little mini training camp and then go back to their clubs and play the club for the weekend but it got very towards the end you know you're working on maybe players coming not being able to train certainly until Tuesday after playing Sunday and then you're playing maybe Friday or Saturday so the time was and you got travelling so no that aspect wasn't so good but working with the players was good because you get to choose get you to choose the best players in the country work with some fabulous players there's obviously always arguments about club versus country do you think still to this day players playing for their country is just as important as it always was yeah I think there was a period where love and desire to play for your country might have even diminished somewhat you know there were more stories at one stage or a feeling sometimes at certain players Did you feel that when you were in charge, perhaps?

27:49No, not to the... I think before me, I think it had been a bit more prevalent. You might, from your time, might have some thoughts in that respect. I don't know. I don't think so. Certainly not in my time. I never really felt it, I've got to say. I think it's the ultimate. It's the ultimate thing, is it to represent your country? Absolutely. I can't imagine. It's just that you hear things, don't you? I think what it is, is sometimes players probably that aren't getting picked. That's it. And they're not in the team. And then they go and they sit on the sidelines and they don't get a look in. And then, you know, they go back to the club and they'll be grumpy.

28:24I think that's, you've sort of summarised that perfectly, really. I don't think any of the players I work with who are the big players, the ones who are the important ones in the team or even in the first 12, 13, 14 players, you'd have to go down to some who are perhaps a bit disgruntled or, what am I doing here? I don't get enough of a game because it's hard enough to keep players happy at club level when you've got a lot of matches. When you've only got two matches in a week, chances are only 11 are you going to get to play? We'll come to England and the experience there in a bit. But your club career, I just really want to know about how you came to be at Inter.

29:05Because obviously it's one of the giants of European football, Inter Milan. It's thanks to someone, a player who the people watching this might know or have heard of his name was Giacinto Fichetti he was a massive Italian star and a real legend from Inter we played Inter two years running in the European Cups at Malmö you know in those days you get to meet people and so on so you don't get to know them but in the ways they get to see you and you get to see them in the second year that was in 1989 we knocked them out which was quite an achievement for Malma to knock out you know Travatoni's Inter they had some big big names so I mean I suppose that might have put my name a little bit on the list there and then it follows on with Switzerland because we beat when we qualified in 94 for the World Cup Italy were in our group and we drew a game in Italy and beat them in Switzerland so again I suppose the We talk about your shares being expanding.