Football: England sack coach McClaren
Posted: 22 November 2007 1718 hrs
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Steve McClaren
LONDON: Steve McClaren paid the price of England's failure to qualify for Euro 2008 on Thursday when he was unceremoniously dismissed from his position as head coach.
McClaren, who had refused to resign, was sacked less than 12 hours after a 3-2 win for Croat at Wembley, combined with Russia's 1-0 win in Andorra, confirmed that England would miss out on a major tournament for the first time since the 1994 World Cup in the United States.
An emergency meeting of the Football Association (FA)'s Executive Board was wound up almost as soon as it began with McClaren's employers acutely aware that they had no option but to call an end to the former Middlesbrough manager's hapless 15-month reign.
A formal announcement of the decision was to be made at a press conference called for 0945 GMT, at which the FA was expected to outline how it will go about finding a successor to McClaren.
Aston Villa manager Martin O'Neill, who was a candidate for the position when McClaren got the job in the wake of the 2006 World Cup, has been installed as the early bookmakers favourite.
But the FA will inevitably also look at the possibility of approaching Jose Mourinho, who has been out of work since leaving Chelsea in September.
McClaren, who stepped up from his former role as number two to Sven Goran Eriksson in the wake of the last World Cup, was handicapped from the start of his time in the post by a feeling that he was a second-choice appointment, the FA having bungled approaches to both Guus Hiddink and Luiz Felipe Scolari.
Although McClaren refused to resign immediately after he and his players were booed off the Wembley turf by an angry capacity crowd, but he did agree that the squad had let the country down.
"It is an indescribable pain," McClaren said. "There is so much expectation, both from the fans in the stadium and the people watching on TV at home.
"We have let them down. We know what they are feeling - we are feeling exactly the same.
"I take responsibility. Ultimately, I said judge me over 12 games. We deserve to be where we finish and we have not deserved to qualify. That is my responsibility."
Those remarks suggest McClaren knew that his fate was sealed. By refusing to resign however he ensured that his employers would be obliged to pay him off for the remaining two years in his contract.
Having presided over a qualifying campaign in which England lost three out of 12 matches as well as being held to draws in Israel and, ultimately fatally, at home to Macedonia, McClaren will walk away with a severance payment in the region of 2.5 million pounds. - AFP/ac