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Like Nordic detective Saga Noren, the former England manager lacked a certain tact. But should his foibles have been accommodated to allow the visionary in him to flourish?

Is Saga Noren Nordic noir's answer to Glenn Hoddle? The thought first intruded during an episode of the recently concluded BBC Four Scandi crime drama, The Bridge, and refused to go away.

At first glance Saga, its long-blonde-haired, tight-leather-trouser-wearing Swedish detective heroine has little in common with the former England manager but closer examination reveals some striking similarities.

A brilliant investigator, she is also borderline autistic, socially inept and emotionally stunted. If no one would ever describe Hoddle as autistic, his sometimes tactless international man-management betrayed a certain lack of emotional intelligence. Ultimately such gaucheness prompted his dismissal from the England post after he blurted out controversial beliefs in reincarnation and the disabled which other, more sensitive types would have long since realised were best kept to themselves.

The fate of an England manager possessing a 61% win ratio – a statistic bettered only by Sir Alf Ramsey and Fabio Capello – was effectively sealed when David Davies, then the Football Association head honcho, stopped referring to "Glenn" and began talking about "Mr Hoddle". Not that it exactly helped when, on breakfast television in early 1999, the prime minister sensed the mood music, tapped into the Zeitgeist and indicated the coach should be toast.

Things had shifted irrevocably since the previous summer when Tony Blair had telephoned Hoddle personally to commiserate on 10-man England's gallant World Cup defeat on penalties to Argentina in France. Admittedly Hoddle's mangled syntax and muddled vocabulary – who can forget his talk of "pigs and troughs"? – hardly helped his cause. And yet in the 13 years since he departed England have arguably not had a technically superior, tactically more progressive coach.

It is easy to forget that he was developing a patient, possession-based brand of international football which, when subsequently practised by Spanish feet, would carve a scenic path to the game's glittering prizes. A clever tactical strategist, he exhibited rare understanding of how sweeper systems actually work and brought the very best out in Paul Scholes.

If David Beckham really felt "humiliated" when the former Spurs midfielder nonchalantly demonstrated a highly technical trick well beyond the capabilities of an England right-winger destined to, one day, help transport the Olympic flame to London, that is his problem. Hoddle's difficulty was that a judgmental, impatient body of received wisdom turned against him, unnerving his FA bosses into effectively throwing the baby out with the bath water and jettisoning not just the manager but an entire philosophy.

As Roy Hodgson heads to Oslo for his first game in charge of England, Saturday's friendly against Norway, he will be uncomfortably aware that in this era of blogging, tweeting and online commenting there is even less room for evolution, let alone second chances. In 2012 a Hoddle-esque take on reincarnation and Karma would immediately go "viral"; with the attendant outrage amplified to unprecedented levels.

Back in the kinder, fictional, world of The Bridge, Saga's colleagues accept her awkward foibles as the trade-off for flashes of genius. Over time she gradually acquires a little diplomacy, nuance and humanity – along with an appreciation of the power of praise and the need for occasional white lies. Maybe Hoddle – only 38 when he succeeded Terry Venables – might eventually have developed the man-managerial qualities required to complement his tactical vision but instead, and at vast expense, the FA worked its scattergun way through Kevin Keegan, Sven-Goran Eriksson, Steve McClaren and Capello. Perhaps Hodgson, an excellent coach, will, finally, prove England's "answer". Intelligent, mature, articulate, big on meritocracy and egalitarianism – spending much of his career in Scandinavia has imbued him with a healthy indifference to "fame" and its trappings – he is everything many of his predecessors were not.

Such attributes augur well but anyone as widely read as Hodgson is aware of the importance of a strong opening chapter. Moreover he has not forgotten that, thrust into the internecine politics of Liverpool, he failed to deliver one and was quickly sacked. With Kenny Dalglish having received the same treatment, Liverpool's American owners are left resembling a cross between their similarly hapless looking counterparts at Aston Villa and the FA recruitment team that pursued Luiz Felipe Scolari but ended up with McClaren.

They are apparently seeking "soccer's" version of Moneyball's Billy Beane but courting, haphazardly, and sometimes forlornly, an eclectic array of characters from Capello to Frank de Boer, Brendan Rodgers to Pep Guardiola and Roberto Martínez to André Villas-Boas seems a strange way of going about it. Equally puzzling is the notion that Louis van Gaal could become Anfield's first sporting director. The much decorated Dutch manager has never been big on democracy or consensus and surely remains far too dogmatic for what boils down to a job share.

The real mystery is why four particular names have not figured on Liverpool's "shortlist". While Alan Pardew should be the clear favourite, Mark Hughes, Martin O'Neill and Martin Jol – who, incidentally, bears more than a passing resemblance to Martin Rohde, Saga's wonderfully crumpled Danish detective sidekick in The Bridge – represent far safer bets than Martínez and Villas-Boas?

If not, there's always Hoddle. Now 54 and busy offering young footballers discarded by English clubs possible second professional chances courtesy of intensive coaching at his Spanish academy, he cuts an appreciably more rounded, much less Saga-like, figure these days. Liverpool – or Villa – could do worse.

Marina Hyde is away Read More

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