We're so short of winning English managers that, at the slightest whiff of success, we demand that the said person be glorified and given the top job in the land.
And so it came to pass after Middlesbrough won a cup for the first time in their 128-year history.
Now that's important on Teesside and rightly has been hailed by wild celebration.
But on the Richter scale of European achievements it doesn't compare to Real Madrid or the finest of Serie A. Boro haven't suddenly become the centre of football's universe.
Will they know of their record-breaking success in Milan, Madrid, Barcelona, or Munich?
Yet Steve McClaren has, since Cardiff last Sunday, been touted for the England job or a seat with any of the top three in the Premiership.
Why? He's just won the Carling Cup, for goodness sake, and with a side marooned 13th out of 20 in the Premiership. The last Englishman to carry off the League Cup, Brian Little of Durham City, wasn't touted for the largest of jobs on the back of Aston Villa's success. Brian, a very good manager, is now at Tranmere Rovers and pleased to be there.
The trouble is that the top league in our country is now full of foreigners, players and managers, and consequently any success by a man of these isles is greeted with lavish over-the-top enthusiasm.
No, I'm not having a go at what Boro have achieved. I've said many times I wish it had been Newcastle United. Nor am I cocking a snook at McClaren, a more than decent coach with Derby and Manchester United.
It's just that winning the Carling Cup - so important that Arsenal fielded their reserves by and large in the semis - hardly qualifies for a coronation as King of England, that's all.
Football's name sinking lower - I'm concerned about football, the sport I've loved with a passion since I was a bairn in Benwell kicking a ball against the brick wall in our back lane.
That fascination with the greatest of team games has stayed with me throughout a long life and career, sightseeing the glories that only football can bring.
However, footballers nowadays - rich, powerful and totally irresponsible young men - are dragging the game into a cesspit of squalor.
All we read about are `roastings' and `doggings' - terms devised to explain sexual activities that interest the law.
The latest horror happened in the sunshine of La Manga - a footballing retreat - this week and resulted in nine Leicester City footballers being arrested by the Spanish police over sex allegations.
It is not just a matter of whether or not these people are guilty - serious though it is if they are. It's also about the crass stupidity of young men in the public eye putting themselves in such a vulnerable position as to be accused of such things.
Young men from any walk of life may drink, be boisterous and chase girls. If they are famous with a couple of quid the chasing has never been necessary. Ask George Best, who merely stood in the corner of a nightclub while the girls flocked to him.
However, there is a mightily huge difference between being young and allowed to enjoy yourself and being pathetic, egotistical and aggressively intimidating.
It isn't as though they aren't aware of the pitfalls. There has been enough past evidence to fill a crimesheet a dozen times over.
But, having had a sniff of the barman's apron and unable to hold their drink, some footballers choose to be a law unto themselves, which is why ordinary decent folk have absolutely no time for them.
It might have drawn a snigger or possibly even a snort of indignation but is it really so ludicrous to suggest Steve Harper deserves an England call-up?
I don't think so....
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