After countless interviews, cloak-and-dagger meetings, secret talks and public humiliation for the Football Association after being turned down by Portugal's Luiz Felipe Scolari, Steve McClaren was named the next England head coach on Thursday -- 99 days after Sven-Goran Eriksson announced he was leaving this summer.
Never has the most important appointment in English football been greeted with such indifference or apathy. We shrugged our collective shoulders, shook our heads and wondered for the 100th time if it was possible for the F.A. to have handled the process of finding Eriksson's successor even worse than it did.