O’Neill fits the bill to transform England

THE BIG money has been pouring on Jose Mourinho and Martin O’Neill.

Odd flutters were reserved for such as Fabio Capello, Guus Hiddink, Harry Redknapp, Alan Shearer andJurgen Klinsmann.

But when FA chief executive Brian Barwick has exhausted his search for the next England manager – and the signs are that it will be long and expensive – Steve McClaren’s successor must do more than coach a winning football team.

He must change the culture which has turned England into the most precious, paranoid, self-inflated, commercially rapacious sports team in the world.

A team full of stars who in the Premier League are revered each week by global audiences approaching one billion and regularly perform with distinction for their clubs but not for their country.

A team full of players such as the showboating Joe Cole, the lethargic Rio Ferdinand, the fame-obsessed David Beckham.

A team full of players who Roy Keane, for one, appears to have little time for. “There are too many egos in there, too many big heads,” says Keane, a man with a state-of-the-art antenna for a prima donna.

“If you get carried away with any little bit of success, then you’re in trouble. I look at the England set-up and they don’t look a happy bunch and their body language sometimes isn’t great.”

Yet is it any wonder England’s elite footballers appear to believe they are somewhat better than they are when they are cloistered from the real world at every opportunity.

Prior to their Euro 2008 qualifying decider against Croatia they were locked away in five-star isolation amid 300 acres of parkland in the Hertfordshire countryside.

Whenever they as much as travel 20 miles up the road they hire a castle, a hideaway or book up every room in a palatial hotel.

In Japan at the 2002 World Cup one of their training headquarters took on the form and air of a concentration camp with barbed wire and guards in turrets at every corner.

I realise there is an additional security requirement representing a country which is fighting unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but England’s obsession with secrecy and privacy is unhealthy.

It is why after the ineffectual McClaren England need someone who can turn the arrogance which has bedevilled English football for so long on its head.

England need to start respecting the opposition. They need to stop believing they have a divine right to qualify for major competitions and begin realising that the world has changed.

And that small nations, ones such as Croatia, take the sport which England gave the world, not just as seriously but as passionately as they do themselves.

What’s more, those small nations have honed technique and footballing artistry as well as the pace and lung power which have been the staple weapons of English football for too long.

Who is the man who can bring such a cerebral approach? One man leaps into the mind. Unfortunately that is Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, a man who insists he does not want the job. Well, he is intelligent.

Former Real Madrid manager Capello and current Russian chief Hiddink have impressive CVs, although the first was ditched by Real and the latter did rather blot his with Russia’s defeat against Israel.

Shearer has no experience, Redknapp has no international or even Champions League background while Klinsmann is an intriguing possibility, although it is one thing inspiring his home country Germany, quite another taking on football’s so-called ‘impossible job.’

Mourinho would be magnificent but also impulsive and emotional and he hardly fits the bill to provide a little more humility, let alone the bill he would hand the FA.

Which leaves O’Neill, a man who fills the score on brain cells, thinks on his feet, is adept at man-management, does not suffer fools and who possesses that touch of eccentricity required to cope with the pressure.

The new England manager? He’s Irish. And that’s not a joke.