In this final segment, I’m looking at the final piece of this mismatched jigsaw; tone. I have already established that the tactics and personnel were just plain wrong, however I contend that above all the tone in and around the England team during the European Championship finals of 2016 were the primary reason for our frankly atrocious tournament.
There is a repetitive narrative to England’s tournament experiences, it plays out like a scratched vinyl broken in a looping monotony that you try to rescue, only to step away and find it in exactly the same predicament a few seconds later. We are our own worst enemies; we struggle to overcome the psychological tests presented. The post tournament inquests normally always questions the psychological factors – mentality, desire, concentration, expectation – all of which could be best summarised as tone. The tone spawned in readiness for a tournament always jolts from one extreme to another – self-deprecation to world-beaters on the England Geiger Meter. To that end, it probably isn’t that much of a surprise to find that I think that the tone and atmosphere generated by Hodgson, the players, the media and the general public both before and during the tournament was the decisive factor behind our failure. But we’ll stick to dissecting Hodgson’s role in this for the time being. From his puzzling media appearances to his poor decision making, Hodgson only had himself to blame for yet another early exit. His demeanour was ill fitting of a young and hungry squad, his decision making awry and his lack of pragmatism was more akin to someone still getting to grips with Championship Manager. Essentially, Hodgson struck a largely negative and defensive tone throughout the tournament – it rubbed off on the players to the point where the Iceland defeat was entirely predictable.
The Three Kittens 