Manager in pink and orange trainers defies heat and humidity during charm offensive at venue of England World Cup opener

Encouraging news for England football fans, who will be heartened to learn that Roy Hodgson’s midweek visit to Manaus was an unequivocal success. Well read, widely travelled and naturally inquisitive, this modern-day Percy Fawcett set out to explore this particular part of the Amazon forest as the public face of an expedition mounted by the Football Association. It was part reconnaissance and part charm offensive before England’s World Cup opener against Italy in June.

While his early-20th century precursor returned from treks to Brazil with implausible tales of encounters with giant spiders, 62ft anacondas and bloodthirsty jungle-dwelling tribesmen, the England manager had to contend with little more worrying than the prospect of offending locals with his ill-advised decision to wear grey, pink and orange Nike trainers with a pair of chinos. One imagines even the most remote and undiscovered Amazonian Indian folk would shudder at such a sartorial faux pas.

Hodgson, of course, has form in the field of unintentionally upsetting the people of Manaus and while the flimsy pretext of his trip to the city was an inspection of the facilities his players and backroom staff will have at their disposal, official FA video footage suggests the main motivation was the forging of an entente cordiale with Arthur Virgílio Neto, the city’s mayor.

A politician with a history of calling out the (not so) good and the (not so) great of his country for corruption in high office, Neto had taken grave exception to Hodgson’s eminently sensible concerns that football matches played in a city with sweltering temperatures and humidity of up to 80% are challenges that his pasty northern European charges might like to avoid.

In a world where increasing numbers of people seem determined to take offence where none is intended, particularly in matters pertaining to the very serious subject of football, Neto seemed to wilfully misinterpret Hodgson’s remarks as an outrageous slur on the good people of Manaus, their city and its weather. “We would also prefer that England doesn’t come,” he said, stopping just short of referring to Hodgson as a silly English pig-dog and ordering him to boil his own bottom. “Fortunately the English people are different to Mr Hodgson. It’s polite to be able to value what is beautiful and nothing is more beautiful than Amazonia, Amazonas and Manaus.”

Of course, as a famous French philosopher once said, everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home, but footage of Hodgson’s trip to Manaus suggests England’s footballers will enjoy their visit to the steamy city. Indeed, many of them are probably already scrambling for tickets to whatever performance is slated for the local opera house that week. With its beautifully appointed renaissance architecture, Glasgow-steel walls, ornate ceramic dome and 198 chandeliers, this famous landmark will prove a godsend to travelling TV reporters, who will be falling over themselves in the rush to use it as a backdrop for dispatches featuring monotonously predictable wordplay likening the prospect of defeat for England to fat ladies breaking into song.

Having spent the early part of his day out in Manaus on board a launch admiring the Meeting of Waters, where the Rio Negro and the Amazon flow side by side to create a breathtaking not-quite-settled pint of Guinness effect, Hodgson spent an inordinate amount of time being photographed in a variety of locations. Wearing a series of ill-fitting hard hats he was diplomacy itself, regularly pausing to gaze thoughtfully into the middle distance and point at things.

Accompanied by William Hague, the foreign secretary, who was there to promote the Foreign Office’s Be On The Ball campaign, the pair extended the hand of friendship and a signed England shirt to the previously indignant Mayor Neto, who seemed suitably appeased and may not now order assorted locals to sabotage England’s early World Cup efforts at every turn.

Away from his diplomatic duties, there was also plenty of football business to take care of and here Hodgson also conducted himself with aplomb. His inspection of the pitch at the local Arena Amazonia went without incident and if he was alarmed by the remarkable similarity between England’s training facility and a giant sand pit, he hid it decidedly well.

Looking dapper from the ankles up in his navy chinos, a pin-striped Ralph Lauren shirt and sunglasses, he stoically ignored both the visible sheen of perspiration on his upper lip and the lather of sweat coating his beaming Tory adherent, as he observed that the weather wasn’t quite as oppressive as he’d previously been led to believe. Proud were the smiles of appreciation from his local hosts.

But what about the team hotel, Roy? What about the team hotel? “The hotel is very good,” he confirmed, in an endorsement so ringing it’s probably still echoing around the review section of Trip Advisor. “It’s newly built, the rooms are very comfortable and I am perfectly happy with it.” Considering the extreme sensitivity of those with whom he was so eager to ingratiate himself, one suspects they could have shown him a cockroach-infested local equivalent of Fawlty Towers and his appraisal would have been much the same. The Brazilian locals have been appeased, now it’s time to upset the Italians.

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• World Cup 2014
• Roy Hodgson
• Manaus

Barry Glendenning

theguardian.com