Acclaim at last for football gentleman Roy Hodgson

After 34 years as a coach and manager in eight countries, football's gentleman Roy Hodgson is finally the toast of the English game after masterminding one of the most incredible comebacks in the history of European football on Thursday night.

His Fulham side's victory over the Italian giants Juventus could count as one of the great upsets in football history - yet it chimes perfectly with Hodgson's career, which has seen the affable 62-year-old repeatedly turn around the fortunes of unfashionable clubs and make them a force to be reckoned with.

Hodgson's men lost the first leg of their Europa League cup tie in Italy 3-1, and then fell behind after three minutes of the return leg in London. But they recovered to win 4-1 on the night and 5-4 on aggregate to send the tournament favourites out of the competition.

The Fulham boss has now been installed as favourite to take over from Fabio Capello if he steps down from the England job, and is being lauded to the rafters by the press.

But despite the sensational scenes at Craven Cottage, Hodgson only allowed himself a brief smile before he began reminding all and sundry that there was another game to look forward to on Sunday. He is too long in the tooth to be carried away on the wave of euphoria washing over the rest of Fulham.

Hodgson is not cut from the same cloth as most modern managers: he rarely questions refereeing decisions, does not lose his temper with interviewers and is never seen ranting and raving in the dugout. Even more unusually for an English football manager he is multilingual, thanks to his nomadic career. He speaks fluent Norwegian, Swedish and Italian as well as some German, Danish and Finnish. Not bad for a boy from Croydon.

After an undistinguished playing career with Crystal Palace and various non-league clubs, Hodgson began his managerial career in Sweden in 1976. That was the same year that Brian Clough was taking Nottingham Forest into the top tier of English football, and Sir Alex Ferguson was cutting his managerial teeth at St Mirren.

In his first season in charge of unfancied Halmstad, who were seen as certainties to be relegated, Hodgson guided them to the league championship. The achievement is still regarded as one of the greatest-ever shocks in Swedish football. But just to prove it was no fluke he repeated the feat in 1979. He was even dubbed "the nicest man in the world" by his fans.

Later he won five successive Swedish championships with Malmo before taking the Swiss national side to the 1994 World Cup, the first time they had appeared in the tournament for 30 years. After qualifying them for Euro 1996 he took over at Inter Milan in Italy.

In 1997 he moved to Blackburn Rovers. It was his second crack at management in his homeland after an undistinguished spell in charge of Bristol City in the early 1980s. Once again he failed and was sacked after a disastrous start to his second season. The press crucified him and it destroyed his reputation in England - he was overlooked for the England manager's job in 2000.

Those on the continent knew better, and he had spells in Denmark, Italy and Norway and as the national coach of the United Arab Emirates and Finland before returning to England for a third attempt in 2007. This time he took over a Fulham side who most people believed were already relegated. But Hodgson somehow kept them in the Premier League and subsequently guided them into Europe, and to last night's improbable victory.

But although Hodgson admitted that, as a former Inter Milan boss, he had enjoyed getting one over on Juventus, he is unlikely to rest on his laurels.

As he told the BBC in 2001: "The thing I'm most proud of is that I still enjoy getting up every morning and working with a group of players and feeling that I can do a good job. That is a better testament to my career and any qualities I may have, than any individual Championship." ·