Graphic: Bill Edgar's tactical analysis

It’s all very nice to get asked to a party, but it would have been helpful if it had said on the invitation whether it was for a canonisation or a lynching. In normal life these things are unlikely to be confused, but in football they are so close that a condemned man can become a saint in the time it takes to score a goal, while in the same interval a man can be dragged off his throne of glory and taken to the gallows.

Last week this match was all set for the lynching of the England head coach, Steve McClaren. It looked like being a dead match, with England down and out of the European Championship. Then Russia made the not very startling discovery that if you prick young Israeli males in their pride, you are likely to get an explosive reaction.

As a result of Israel’s victory, England were suddenly back in it. Does this make McClaren a genius? Does it mean that, contrary to what the fans have been singing, that he does know what he is doing after all? Last night, at least at the start, as McClaren appeared in his technical area beneath an enormous and comic umbrella, there seemed to be a lack of certainty as to how to react.

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BACKGROUND

• McClaren sacked as England coach

• Dismissal is no compensation for England fans

• Jitters destroy England’s composure

• Turnip or terrific? Fans give answer to McClaren

BACKGROUND

• How England rated

• If O’Neill says no, will the FA call Klinsmann?

• Terry defends man in charge

• Why England will be sorely missed in finals

BACKGROUND

• Let’s not just blame the team, blame the Americans too

• Good riddance to fear factors

• Echoes of Bogota as Croatia official is accused of shoplifting

• Seven deadly sins

BACKGROUND

• McClaren: the buck stops with me

• Analysis: Gabriele Marcotti

• 'Not even prepared to get his hair wet!' - the fans' verdict

• Barwick: McClaren had to go

BACKGROUND

• England's qualifying horrors

Multimedia

• England fans: let off steam here

• How the drama unfolded

• Is McClaren a scapegoat?

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• What you should do next summer

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• Good riddance to fear factors

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• How the drama unfolded

A chant of “We are not entirely sure whether or not you know what you’re doing but we’ll probably have a better idea in a couple of hours” would probably have covered it but it lacks bounce. Instead, the stadium was suffused with a passionate uncertainty: the mood was all “they’re surely not going to f*** it up now, are they?”

Not exactly the raucous explosion of patriotism that McClaren had asked for: despite the really rather unnecessary appearance of a band of Iraq veterans, who turned up to exploit the traditional sport/war confusion. But the fan’s equivocal response came about because football doesn’t like uncertainty, save when it comes to the result. You are either a genius or a fool. There is no middle way.

The truth is that most managers are caught some way between messiah and turnip: but we just won’t accept it. You simply have to be either one or the other. Sven-Göran Eriksson began his term as England head coach as a genius and ended it as a fool. He was neither. McClaren is likewise neither, but he knew he was going to end up the evening as one or the other.

Brave, they said, decisive, they said, when he dropped both David Beckham and Paul Robinson, his increasingly dodgy goalkeeper, for the wet-behind-the-ears Scott Carson. Ha! That’s the sort of decision that shows what kind of manager you are. Which makes McClaren either unlucky or a hopeless judge of character, and neither of these are good things for a manager-to-be. Carson’s eighth-minute howler, an error far worse than Robinson’s famous misfortune with the divot, was one of football’s classic instantaneous disasters.

England had been looking good for eight minutes, but what good was that? That awful first goal set the tone for a classic night of England-watching agony. McClaren, looking like Mary Poppins under his umbrella, gulped from a bottle of water wishing it were brandy.

He scribbled furiously in his notebook: what was he writing? Something about goodbye cruel world? Goodbye cruel sport? Or perhaps, rather more to the point, just goodbye cruel job. The half-time whistle went and the crowd was at last united, was certain of its response. The boos rang out, more in sorrow and dismay than in anger.

Throughout his brief tenure, McClaren has made such reputation as he has by alternately dropping and recalling Beckham at the media’s behest. So at half-time the inevitable gamble. Beckham came on to rescue a manager who was now turned himself into a sort of Rodin statue: Desperation With Brolly. Jermain Defoe came on as well and within ten minutes had won a penalty, proving, no doubt, that McClaren is a genius after all. Frank Lampard converted it with conviction.

But the man who writes Beckham’s scripts had yet to go into action. Oh, that right-foot cross: how many times have we seen it? Seldom more perfect and more timely, that’s for sure: and Peter Crouch’s finish was a truly fitting response to its beauty. McClaren, now sans umbrella and with waterproof jacket aflap, came close to exploding with relief. Oh brave new world that has such geniuses in it!

There is a sort of tradition in football that states when two sides both need a draw, a draw sort of arranges itself. Alas, no one told the Croats. A third goal felt like a breach of propriety, but it was enough to do for England and McClaren. It seems his reputation for genius is no more. The turnip stood revealed beneath the umbrella while the skies wept.