A lot of people in England have been trying to turn back time over the last few days – and Roy Hodgson managed to get it all the way back to Belo Horizonte in 1950.
Not since a distant World Cup, 66 years ago, have England suffered a humiliation as great as this. Beaten by Iceland – a nation with a population the size of Leicester, playing in their first international tournament. For Hodgson, this was the bitter end. His players were booed, individually and collectively, and there was none of the residue of goodwill felt at the end of the 2014 World Cup.
He will go now, as he should have then, the signs of progress that the Football Association demanded sadly absent in a display as confused and ineffectual as any England have delivered at a major tournament to date. Beaten by the United States in 1950, England at least had mitigation. It was their first tournament, and in South America. These were unfamiliar circumstances.
