A P IE CE OF TH E AC TION
mind. Hodgson pays tribute to the forward thinking of the Swiss FA: ‘Switzerland was far ahead of its time in 1992 when I joined. As with other countries, the football association there is the governing body, so it looks after all aspects of the sport from refereeing to handicapped sport, amateur football and so on. The difference is that in most countries, there is a large gap between what the FA is trying to do and what the professional leagues are trying to do. Whereas in Switzerland, they ensured there was board representation from league football, pure amateur football and the professional lower leagues from an early stage. This worked extremely well, because these four important people and I would get together regularly, and determine together how to get the most out of my role.’This may sound like a minor tweak, until we hear the effect of the body on the wider game:‘The classic example of how it worked well for me was the time they gave me with the players outside of the standard days around qualifying matches and friendlies. I would get the team for five or six get-togethers during a qualifying campaign. So when the players had played for their professional teams on a Sunday I would get them until the Wednesday morning, which gave us a couple of days together regularly during the season. That’s a very good example of co-operation between all the bodies working in favour of the national team. The clubs were asked to commit to it, and they accepted that between three and five times a year we would have access to their players. Then thinking more along PR terms, we took the players that I had selected to different venues around Switzerland. That’s easier in a small country, of course, but we wouldn’t meet in Zurich or in Geneva all the time – we would go to Berne, Basle and other cities so that people in the various regions felt the national team was engaging with them.The arrangement worked really well, and I got to know players so much better. So often I had to make decisions based on one or two
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