I have a theory, which I put to Roy Hodgson, that he was possibly on the cusp of becoming a national treasure but is now, instead, a cult hero.
When he was appointed in March as an emergency successor to Patrick Vieira, who had been sacked by Crystal Palace, the announcement was greeted with a good deal of negativity. Hodgson had said his goodbyes to the club in May 2021 and was assumed to be entering retirement. He had re-emerged to take charge of Watford but failed to keep them in the Premier League and that really was assumed to be the finale to a coaching career which began in Sweden in 1976.
Palace, his boyhood club, were supposed to have entered a new phase
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