Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus

 

The older you become, the harder it is to believe in Father Christmas. I was 7 when I began to question his existence, and it took some twenty years for my faith to be restored. In that time, I did watch Ernest Saves Christmas on numerous occasions, and it’s pretty damn convincing, I must admit. In this masterful 1980s movie, Ernest P Worrell explains the science behind Santa’s Christmas Eve mission succinctly:

You take the International Date Line, multiply it by the Time Zones, divided by the accelerated rotation of the earth… uh, carry the 1, and, uh, allowing for the Vernal Equinox on the Tropic of Cancer, he might just pull it off. 

I figure that believing in Santa Claus is no less plausible than believing in God, and there was certainly something divine about the delivery of my Christmas wish this year. When the inept and out-of-his-depth Lawrie Sanchez was appointed manager of Fulham in May of last year, I told anyone who’d listen that I wished him to be gone by Christmas. It’s not that I get pleasure in seeing a man made unemployed, but Sanchez knew next-to-nothing about managing a Premier League club, and under his stewardship we risked dropping down a division, stuck as we were in a rut of dull and depressing football.

My fears were proved right when we made a catastrophic start to the 2007/08 season. With just two victories between August and December, and £25 million spent on players who could barely control the bell let alone score with it, the writing was on the wall. But Fulham’s chairman Mohamed Fayed was rather preoccupied with the inquest into the death of his son, Dodi, and Princess Diana. I had a horrible feeling he wasn’t keeping his eye on events at Fulham, which were fast spiralling out of control.

But Santa heard my early Christmas wish, and duly delivered. Sanchez was kicked out a week before Christmas. What happened next proves that this wasn’t merely coincidence, but part of Santa’s master plan to make me happy. I had clearly been a good boy in 2007.

One of my heroes is a 60-year-old man from Croydon called Roy Hodgson. He is a fellow Scandophile, having lived and worked in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway as a football manager. When I lived in Sweden, I wrote the odd football report or two, and so often Swedish football fans and journalists would tell me how great a manager Roy Hodgson was. He had won everything there was to win in Sweden, and is widely credited with leading a roots and branch overhaul of the way Swedes play football.

In England, he’s rather less respected by casual football observers who haven’t paid close attention to his extraordinary CV. But the journalists who know their stuff – admittedly few and far between – have long defended him.

I’ve spent the last seven years or so banging on about Hodgson, about how much of an over-achiever he is (rather like Sweden itself). I would fantasise about him becoming Fulham manager, knowing deep down that was about as likely as George W Bush holding his hands up and saying “You know what? I’m out of my depth. I resign. Party on, America!” Hodgson had been rejected by his homeland once before, after an uneasy time as coach of Blackburn Rovers, and he was snubbed in favour of Swede Sven Goran Eriksson for the England manager’s job in 2001. Not only that, but in November of last year he accepted an executive job at one of Europe’s footballing giants, Inter Milan.

But so it came to pass that my Christmas wish – and the final bit of Santa evidence – appeared a couple of days after Christmas. Roy Hodgson ha changed his mind about Inter Milan and been appointed Fulham manager. He got the phone call offering him the job whilst on holiday in Torquay.

Within hours of the announcement, I received a flurry of text messages from friends who know I have a lot of love for the Hodge. My friend John jokingly wondered if I’d had some sort of influence on the decision. This was a monumental event and it made absolutely no sense.

It may not seem much to you, and I do often lose all rationality and reason when it comes to football, but Hodgson’s appointment is my idea of a dream-come-true and on Saturday the Hodgson Revolution truly began. This was the first time the Hodge fielded a team featuring a number of his own signings – three Scandinavians – and the team put in a gutsy, committed performance. The result was our first win since early November, against a team more than 20 points above us in the league table. It was heroic stuff, and more than that – I won £26 from a £5 bet that Fulham would win, and win 2-1. This rare betting success will almost cover my ticket to watch the team play Everton in a few weeks’ time.

There’s a long way to go, and Fulham are still very much stuck at the wrong end of the table, but all the players are falling over themselves to compliment the new boss, gushing about his experience, skill and motivation skills. Whether he can motivate a squad comprised largely of mediocrity remains to be seen, but one of the most successful English managers in football history is leading my club, and I’m thanking Santa for the honour.

Sticking to this Christmas theme (we need something cheery to get us through the dark and dismal February) take a look at this video. It’s a tutorial I made for making a gingerbread house. Pictures of the completed house are available on the left of this page, in my Flickr profile. Enjoy!