Not only did Lee Carsley not sing the national anthem, he made a FOOL of himself by going to the wrong dug-out, writes JONATHAN McEVOY

There are emblems that count more than words – sung or otherwise. One was Steve McClaren standing on Wembley’s sodden grass, a cup of coffee in one hand, an umbrella in the other.

‘A Wally with a Brolly,’ stated the headline on the back page of Mail Sport the next morning. He was finished.

A crucial qualifier for Euro 2008 in that case, against Croatia, rather than a pointless evening off from the Premier League on Saturday night. Let’s not carried away but all went moderately smoothly on the turf, as it always should have done against a useless Ireland side.

But even in stuttering victory part of a national heritage was burnt before the game started. And in such comedy that his detractors couldn’t have made up. I cite my colleague Jeff Powell MBE, who, on Friday, called for Lee Carsley to be sacked ahead of his first match as England manager for absurdly refusing to sing the national anthem.

But not even Jeff could have scripted Carsley making a fool of himself by going to sit in the Ireland dugout.

Carsley (centre) had previously not sung the anthem as head coach of the England Under-21s

Carsley’s tenure as interim manager started off awkwardly as he sat in the wrong dug-out

Unintentional, of course, and swiftly rectified, but an embarrassing vignette just before kick-off when you have just made a point of your transactional Englishness.

This is, after all, the national team of England, the England football team, a symbol of so much meaning that it outranks every other of our sporting endeavours. 

Perhaps being Ian Botham, Sir Ian, or Baron Botham, if you will, carries a national distinction that those of us who grew up in his era will never forget. To be a boy in the 1980s, nobody compared with the John Bull of bat and ball. A fact, and no Brit who is in their forties or fifties will disagree, with respect to Robson and Thompson (the maverick who whistled the anthem, actually) & Coe.

But if you go far back as far as the 1960s – and I don’t; Jeff does, as a reporter on this paper – the success of our boys in white, or red, is the supreme arbiter of our country’s sporting achievement. 

Charlton and Moore don’t need their Bobbys to define them. One was knighted, the other should have been but he departed this life too early. We know all their team-mates, each’s position on the field and in the wider public consciousness.

Anyway, it came to this: a 50-year-old former Ireland midfielder taking over the England team and remaining still-lipped as God Save the King was played.

Born in Birmingham, Carsley went on to represent the Republic of Ireland at international level

Members of Carsley’s backroom staff including former Chelsea defender Ashley Cole (right) sang ‘God Save The King’

The line of players joined in, ironically including the scorers who played for Ireland as kids, Declan Rice and Jack Grealish, before agents told them that England was a bank to be raided, their fame heightened.

Even Sven-Goran Eriksson mumbled the anthem in his day. Fabio Capello could barely say ‘hello’ in English, so if he didn’t go in for singing filiality with our old monarch, he’s excused – however much an error it was to offer the job abroad as if the FA were ticket touts, selling to the highest bidder.

Our new Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, as woke as it comes, was in Dublin and ludicrously said it was a personal decision whether Carsley, Birmingham-raised, sang the anthem or not.

Carsley, for his part, ventured that it was a distraction to the forthcoming football. Nonsense. It was a deliberate statement on where he stands.

You might say Ireland’s new Icelandic manager Heimir Hallgrimsson, successor to Stephen Kenny, did not sing the Irish anthem, Amhran na bhFiann, after that country’s president Michael D Higgins tottered around on his walking sticks. But that is their business. This is ours.