Post by QPR Report on Jun 10, 2010 6:21:02 GMT
Briefly-QPR, Steve Hodge has a biography. Nothing in the review re QPR, but presumably might be a brief reference to his joining QPR (and a few years previously, almost-joining QPR).. So if anyone takes a look..
The Times June 10, 2010/Tom Dart
Steve Hodge recalls heady drinking days of World Cups past
Twenty-three young men abroad in a hotel for a month. What larks. Perhaps someone will text his girlfriend from the breakfast table. Maybe order room service. Even wear slippers outside his room. Yes, life in the England camp is going to be wild.
The past had personality. Too much, at times. Before England’s first game at Italia ‘90, Bobby Robson held a crisis meeting after several players sneaked out of the hotel for a drinking session, returned at 1.30am and Bryan Robson — the captain — injured his big toe trying, for reasons best known to himself, to overturn a bed.
If Fabio Capello had been England manager 20 years ago, would he have even selected Paul Gascoigne? The Italian seems like a man with a low tolerance of japery.
Soon after the squad arrived at their base, Gascoigne ordered pina coladas and hoodwinked Bobby Robson, the manager, into thinking that they were banana milkshakes. At training he stuffed Robson’s boots with paper and before a tennis match he decided to see how many pieces of chewing gum he could fit in his mouth. An impressive 26.
As Steve Hodge tells it, life on national duty for Mexico ’86 and Italia ’90 was a strange blend of levity and tedium, optimism and depression, dedication and mischief. The former midfield player collected 24 England caps, won the championship with Leeds United in 1992 as a team-mate of Eric Cantona and spent six years at Nottingham Forest in two spells under Brian Clough. So he is not short of stories, and his new autobiography is rich in anecdotes such as those above.
Bobby Robson is as you would expect: fallible but likeable. Before the quarter-final against Cameroon, Robson informs the squad: “My scout (Howard Wilkinson) tells me we’ve been given a bye to the semi-final.” England need a late equaliser and come from behind to win in extra time.
As Hodge tells it, in a meeting ahead of the semi-final against West Germany, Gary Lineker “stood up and offered even money that the gaffer would mention the war. He did. We all looked round as he said it. It was a serious speech about the biggest games of our career. I just had to look at the floor.”
You wonder if the theme from The Benny Hill Show would have been a more apt soundtrack to the tournament than Nessun Dorma.
Hodge won two caps under Robson’s successor, Graham Taylor. One of Taylor’s first acts was a bonding exercise involving a trip to see the musical Buddy, then a meal and on to a karaoke bar. John Barnes sang When Doves Cry; Stuart Pearce, Stepping Out; Lee Dixon and Tony Adams, You’re The One That I Want. Steve Harrison, the assistant manager, disguised himself as a tramp and on another occasion, appeared on the roof of the team hotel dressed as Quasimodo.
“Gazza and the manager were arm in arm at the end of the night with Gazza throwing water around while singing Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head, by the end of which he’d drenched Ian Wright,” Hodge writes. “A couple of the lads were sick on the team bus afterwards, and it stank of vomit by the time we got back to the hotel.”
Not quite Capello’s style. But standards were different then. Footballers were less bland and more irreverent. When interviewed, Hodge, 47 and an Academy coach at Forest, emphasised that England’s players were serious as well as silly.
“In every squad, you get three or four players who need to unwind and that’s what it was,” he said. “The professionalism of all those players in those two World Cups was pretty good.
“I don’t think anyone came back thinking they hadn’t put their all in. After all, we only got beaten by a dodgy goal and a penalty shoot-out.”
As for Taylor’s tactics: “It was the end of the era of having a drinking session and chilling out. He wanted to get close to the players, for them to like him and take on his beliefs and philosophies, I could see why he was doing it.”
Without Hodge, the most infamous goal in history would never have been scored. It was his undercooked backpass that Maradona illegally intercepted when England lost to Argentina in the quarter-finals of Mexico ’86.
“I really didn’t know what had gone on, I didn’t even think about handball,” Hodge said. “But I knew something was wrong because the ball had gone into the goal with the wrong kind of pace.
“I didn’t find out until we came in afterwards that he’d handled it. I was annoyed, thinking he’s cheated and got away with it. On the other hand, the second goal was fantastic. That’s why I asked for his shirt afterwards.”
Hodge still has the prized possession. In hindsight, it seems amazing that England did not have a specific tactical plan to deal with Maradona. Nor, as far as Hodge can recall, was he even mentioned in the dressing room at half-time. Everyone was talking about him after the final whistle, of course, and for his second goal as well as his first.
“I think we all thought at some point somebody would nail him or he’d make a mistake or fall down, but he wouldn’t go from where he received the ball to the back of the net,” Hodge said. “I was five yards behind when he took off and probably feeling the heat and the altitude a little bit.
“You’re thinking, he’s got to beat three, four, five to score a goal. I’ll just get there as soon as I can. But he was just too hot for us all in that ten-second period.”
The Man With Maradona’s Shirt by Steve Hodge, published by Orion, is out on June 3.
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/article7147151.ece
The Times June 10, 2010/Tom Dart
Steve Hodge recalls heady drinking days of World Cups past
Twenty-three young men abroad in a hotel for a month. What larks. Perhaps someone will text his girlfriend from the breakfast table. Maybe order room service. Even wear slippers outside his room. Yes, life in the England camp is going to be wild.
The past had personality. Too much, at times. Before England’s first game at Italia ‘90, Bobby Robson held a crisis meeting after several players sneaked out of the hotel for a drinking session, returned at 1.30am and Bryan Robson — the captain — injured his big toe trying, for reasons best known to himself, to overturn a bed.
If Fabio Capello had been England manager 20 years ago, would he have even selected Paul Gascoigne? The Italian seems like a man with a low tolerance of japery.
Soon after the squad arrived at their base, Gascoigne ordered pina coladas and hoodwinked Bobby Robson, the manager, into thinking that they were banana milkshakes. At training he stuffed Robson’s boots with paper and before a tennis match he decided to see how many pieces of chewing gum he could fit in his mouth. An impressive 26.
As Steve Hodge tells it, life on national duty for Mexico ’86 and Italia ’90 was a strange blend of levity and tedium, optimism and depression, dedication and mischief. The former midfield player collected 24 England caps, won the championship with Leeds United in 1992 as a team-mate of Eric Cantona and spent six years at Nottingham Forest in two spells under Brian Clough. So he is not short of stories, and his new autobiography is rich in anecdotes such as those above.
Bobby Robson is as you would expect: fallible but likeable. Before the quarter-final against Cameroon, Robson informs the squad: “My scout (Howard Wilkinson) tells me we’ve been given a bye to the semi-final.” England need a late equaliser and come from behind to win in extra time.
As Hodge tells it, in a meeting ahead of the semi-final against West Germany, Gary Lineker “stood up and offered even money that the gaffer would mention the war. He did. We all looked round as he said it. It was a serious speech about the biggest games of our career. I just had to look at the floor.”
You wonder if the theme from The Benny Hill Show would have been a more apt soundtrack to the tournament than Nessun Dorma.
Hodge won two caps under Robson’s successor, Graham Taylor. One of Taylor’s first acts was a bonding exercise involving a trip to see the musical Buddy, then a meal and on to a karaoke bar. John Barnes sang When Doves Cry; Stuart Pearce, Stepping Out; Lee Dixon and Tony Adams, You’re The One That I Want. Steve Harrison, the assistant manager, disguised himself as a tramp and on another occasion, appeared on the roof of the team hotel dressed as Quasimodo.
“Gazza and the manager were arm in arm at the end of the night with Gazza throwing water around while singing Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head, by the end of which he’d drenched Ian Wright,” Hodge writes. “A couple of the lads were sick on the team bus afterwards, and it stank of vomit by the time we got back to the hotel.”
Not quite Capello’s style. But standards were different then. Footballers were less bland and more irreverent. When interviewed, Hodge, 47 and an Academy coach at Forest, emphasised that England’s players were serious as well as silly.
“In every squad, you get three or four players who need to unwind and that’s what it was,” he said. “The professionalism of all those players in those two World Cups was pretty good.
“I don’t think anyone came back thinking they hadn’t put their all in. After all, we only got beaten by a dodgy goal and a penalty shoot-out.”
As for Taylor’s tactics: “It was the end of the era of having a drinking session and chilling out. He wanted to get close to the players, for them to like him and take on his beliefs and philosophies, I could see why he was doing it.”
Without Hodge, the most infamous goal in history would never have been scored. It was his undercooked backpass that Maradona illegally intercepted when England lost to Argentina in the quarter-finals of Mexico ’86.
“I really didn’t know what had gone on, I didn’t even think about handball,” Hodge said. “But I knew something was wrong because the ball had gone into the goal with the wrong kind of pace.
“I didn’t find out until we came in afterwards that he’d handled it. I was annoyed, thinking he’s cheated and got away with it. On the other hand, the second goal was fantastic. That’s why I asked for his shirt afterwards.”
Hodge still has the prized possession. In hindsight, it seems amazing that England did not have a specific tactical plan to deal with Maradona. Nor, as far as Hodge can recall, was he even mentioned in the dressing room at half-time. Everyone was talking about him after the final whistle, of course, and for his second goal as well as his first.
“I think we all thought at some point somebody would nail him or he’d make a mistake or fall down, but he wouldn’t go from where he received the ball to the back of the net,” Hodge said. “I was five yards behind when he took off and probably feeling the heat and the altitude a little bit.
“You’re thinking, he’s got to beat three, four, five to score a goal. I’ll just get there as soon as I can. But he was just too hot for us all in that ten-second period.”
The Man With Maradona’s Shirt by Steve Hodge, published by Orion, is out on June 3.
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/article7147151.ece