wanted to be part of that.
In the end, I don’t know if there were people at the FA pulling strings for Roy or working against me, and I don’t really care eitherway. I’ve known Trevor Brooking since he was a kid at West Ham. I can’t say we’ve had a close relationship since I left, but he came to my father’s funeral, and I have never had reason to believe he would have done anything to stop me getting the England job. As for Bernstein, the FA chairman at the time, I don’t even know the man. A few weeks after Roy was appointed I bumped into him at the League Managers Association dinner, but we didn’t talk about England. I certainly wasn’t going to start asking awkward questions. These people are strangers to me, anyway. If you look at the people that make the big decisions at the FA, the ones that have the greatest voice, all I would say is: there should be more football people involved. I’d like to see more ex-professionals, more ex-managers, more expertise. It can’t be that they have Trevor in as a token figure, and the rest are amateurs.
It’s not as if it’s going well.
In fact, we’ve spent fortunes and had some right disasters. The whole set-up needs to change. We need more committees of people who have played or coached football, people who know what is right and wrong in the game. I wouldn’t trust the FA to tell me a good manager if their lives depended on it. How would they know? What clubs have they ever run? Who do they speak to that really knows the game? I’m not knocking them because of what happened to me. This isn’t about me or Roy Hodgson, but about English football being run by people who really haven’t got a clue. And they get to pick the England manager. Then again, it shouldn’t surprise us. Look how they treated the greatest English footballer.
CHAPTER THREE
BOBBY (AND GEORGE)
When I go to Upton Park these days, there are two gigantic portraits in the corners at each end. One is of Sir Trevor Brooking, the other of Bobby Moore. Think about that. Sir Trevor Brooking; plain old Bobby Moore. No disrespect to Trevor, he was a great footballer and remains a fine ambassador for the game, but it doesn’t seem right. How was Trevor knighted and Bobby ignored? How was the greatest footballer and one of the greatest sportsmen this country ever produced reduced to living his final years as a commentator on Capital Radio and a columnist in the downmarket Sunday Sport newspaper – rejected by his club, his country, and those who should have placed him at the heart of the game? The hypocrisy that followed his tragically premature death in 1993 sickens me.
Bob’s got it all now. The old South Bank named after him at Upton Park, statues outside the ground and at Wembley Stadium. They even use his name to sell West Ham United merchandise these days. ‘Moore than a football club’ is the slogan. When he was alive they didn’t want to know him. I saw him get slung out of there for not having a ticket.
It was the 1979–80 season and I had just returned from four years playing and coaching in America with Seattle Sounders and Phoenix Fire. I went to watch West Ham, who were in the Second Division at the time. I can’t remember who they were playing – a team in yellow, I think – but I know I sat next to Frank Lampard’s mum. Frank was still playing but West Ham were struggling that season and it was quite a poor gate. They weren’t going to get promoted but they were too good to go down. It was a mid-table, middle of the road, nothing match. The players’ families and guests used to sit in E block, and Bobby would often come to watch. He didn’t want to cause a big commotion walking through the crowd, or hanging around before the game, so he would wait until after kick-off, go up to one of the old turnstiles with the wooden doors, and knock. The bloke would open up and, blimey, it’s Bobby Moore. ‘Come in, Bob, there’s plenty of seats upstairs,’ and up he would go. I
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