I attended Ralf Rangnick's press conferences and saw his honesty scare Manchester United staff

England were 86 seconds away from an inquest comparable with the nadir of Iceland eight years ago until Jude Bellingham struck a pose he could trademark.

In 2016, Roy Hodgson knew the game was up before he returned to the dressing room in Nice. The Football Association's technical director quickly identified a leftfield candidate to modernise the England national team.

He was interviewed by a three-man panel. It went well. But it was a two-horse race. The technical director was outvoted two-to-one. David Gill and Martin Glenn chose Sam Allardyce.

The candidate was Ralf Rangnick. The FA technical director was Dan Ashworth. Ashworth now occupies a role at Manchester United the club ought to have offered to Rangnick five years ago.

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In the end, Ed Woodward turned to someone right on his doorstep in John Murtough. Woodward's rationale was that Rangnick was solely a recruitment specialist.

Then Murtough headhunted Rangnick to take interim charge of United in December 2021. Woodward, serving out his notice, may have felt vindicated.

Rangnick jarred with the compliant and complacent culture at United. Of all the post-Ferguson managers, only Jose Mourinho has chaired press conferences with greater box office appeal than Rangnick.

There has been some revisionism of Rangnick's United tenure during the European Championship. His Austria side have been one of the most crowdpleasing in Germany and topped their group ahead of a methodical France and the disjointed Dutch.

Some managers are suited to international competition (Gareth Southgate was another