They call him Big Sam. At 6’3 that’s not an unlikely nickname, especially when you’ve spent most of your professional career crunching through opposition centre-forwards. But the mythology of Big Sam goes beyond mere volume.
Sam Allardyce has just been appointed to the role of England football manager. The great poisoned chalice of international sport, Allardyce succeeds Roy Hodgson, a man whose own affectionate moniker was extracted from his speech impediment. But there was nothing big about Woy.
Allardyce is taking over at a time of crisis. If it hadn’t been for the success of Wales (and relative success of Northern Ireland) at the Euros, far more Brexit jokes would’ve been thrown out after England’s calamitous defeat to Iceland, during the Nordic nation’s historic run to the quarter-finals. But the 2-1 loss to a country consisting of little more than 323,000 people and some pumice was a seismic shock to the footballing establishment.
Enter Big Sam, a man with an approach so averse to nonsense he doesn’t even know the meaning of the word.
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