THE SCOOPS THAT STUNNED FOOTBALL
HODDLE’S REINCARNATION VIEWS END LIFE AS ENGLAND BOSS 1999
When the Three Lions chief aired his opinion that people with disabilities were being punished for past sins, the blowback was immediate – not least for Matt Dickinson in the eye of a media storm
“After the 1998 World Cup, there had been a few road bumps for England – they’d lost their first Euro 2000 qualifier in Sweden, where Paul Ince was sent off, then drawn 0-0 at home to Bulgaria. It’s fair to say the wheels were a little bit wobbly.
“As it was back then, the FA embarked on something of a charm offensive and had offered Glenn Hoddle around to some media outlets for interview. As the joke now goes, though, he just forgot the charm bit with me. Actually, it wasn’t even supposed to be me speaking to him: Ollie Holt, my colleague at the time, was away – so it fell on me to do the interview ahead of a friendly with France.
“It was a great opportunity for both the paper and me – the chance to have a good one-on-one with England’s manager on the phone. I’d remembered reading a piece in another paper where Glenn had talked about his religious beliefs, and it had stuck in my mind that no one had really touched on it since – his views on reincarnation naturally jumped out, as people in football don’t tend to discuss things like that. There was also the Eileen Drewery faith healer stuff, and it struck me as slightly strange that this hadn’t been explored too much with him.
“I’d actually ended up in the banqueting hall at Wembley with Drewery before France 98, and was interested in how much she was involved. All of it together seemed pretty key to his make-up and management style, and worth asking about.
“HE SAID HE’D BEEN MISQUOTED AND WENT ON THE OFFENSIVE – THAT’S WHEN I LOST SYMPATHY”
“So we did the interview. We talked about the football, then I just asked him a general question about what his religion meant to him. That’s when he got into reincarnation, and... well, the rest is history.
“When we finished the interview, my first reaction after coming off the phone wasn’t, ‘I’ve got a great scoop here’. I just remember turning to my wife and saying, ‘Well, that was odd’. I went back over the quotes thinking how strange they were. I hadn’t brought up religion thinking he was going to expand on the subject like he did, but I quickly realised that my initial feelings stemmed from an uneasiness that what he’d just said could seem extremely judgemental and offensive. I also remember Drewery once suggesting similar; that those with really bad asthma may have dropped a mustard gas bomb in a previous life or something similar. That troubled me – still does – as a way of making someone feel about themselves. It’s not exactly compassionate.
“A lot of people thought Hoddle was toast as soon as the first edition of the paper dropped, but I wondered – perhaps naively – whether he may be able to talk past it and apologise. Instead, he lurched around saying he’d been misquoted, misinterpreted and generally went on the offensive. That’s when I lost any level of sympathy – when he tried to turn things on me instead of fronting up.
“I learned more in those four days than I possibly could have done in 10 years. I was 30-odd, so not a kid, but it
