Roy Hodgson’s BlackBerry trills. It’s his third call within half an hour. His wife, Sheila, and a Swedish newspaper have rung, and next is a League One club from the north, who want to use Fulham’s training ground before a London fixture. “Fine,” Hodgson assents. It is a good job he’s a gentleman, with time for everybody, because everybody wants his time. Our interview lasts two hours, and he has another to fit in. International weeks are supposed to be quiet for club managers.

Hodgson, though, has always been a man in demand. The longest hiatus in a 33-year, eight-country coaching career was a five-month sabbatical recovering from the pain of his only sacking, by Blackburn. He is feted from Stavanger to Sharjah but has never been as cherished in his homeland as he is now.

Fulham, relegation fighters when he arrived in December 2007, now battle in the Europa League. Last season’s finish (seventh in the top flight) was the best in club history, and supermarket signings such as Brede Hangeland, Bobby Zamora and Dickson Etuhu perform like Harrods merchandise.

“My greatest achievement would have to be the water-into-wine job at Halmstads in 1976, but taking Switzerland to the last 16 of a World Cup and reaching the Uefa Cup final with Internazionale were good, and there were the five successive league titles with Malmo. Yet Fulham is something I’m just as proud of,” Hodgson reflects.

“When I arrived, the major problem was the size of the squad, the fact so many people had been brought in and not given a chance, so we had political problems to solve. Now all the players have bought into my ethos. I made it clear straight away that the only way to resolve problems is on the field of play. Coaching’s not scribbling on a blackboard or talking, but out there,” he adds, pointing from his office window at a practice pitch.

The Hodgson method, which has proved so transportable, is so simple — clear principles, good communication, serious effort. “Of course it’s nice for people to believe some managers are born with a magical quality that will transform bad into good, but I don’t,” Hodgson says. “It’s about leadership skills, practice, repetition and bloody hard work.”

“I’m flavour of the month, that’s all,” he says, laughing off a newspaper article touting him to manage Britain’s 2012 Olympic footballers. “I can think of a more suitable job.”

Should Fabio Capello quit England after the World Cup, who better to replace him? Check the CV.

THE NORDIC COUNTRIES

In Hodgson’s first year in management, aged 28, he won the first of two Swedish titles with unfancied Halmstads. Five championships with Malmo followed, and a Danish title with FC Copenhagen. In Norway he took Viking Stavanger from the relegation zone into the Uefa Cup and narrowly missed qualification for Euro 2008 with Finland.

“I was recommended to Halmstads by my close friend Bob Houghton [who played alongside Hodgson at Maidstone and coached Malmo to a European Cup final]. On the first day of the season, 20 newspapers said Halmstads would go down. We won the championship in style.

“I’d qualified for my full coaching badge at 23 but that was my first season coaching adults. Halmstads had played a very different type of football to what I wanted, man-to-man across the field, with a libero. From the start it was: ‘Okay, you lads know nothing, this is what we’re going to do’. I remember the turning point. I was thinking about it reading of the suicide of Robert Enke.