LONDON: Roy Hodgson was hired as England's national team coach Tuesday, six weeks before the European Championship.

The Football Association said the 64-year-old West Bromwich Albion manager signed a four-year deal.

He will leave West Brom at the end of the season on May 13 to lead England into the Euros in Poland and Ukraine.

He succeeds Fabio Capello, the Italian who quit in February in a dispute with the FA after John Terry was stripped of the captaincy.

Harry Redknapp, the favorite to take over the England job, has been brushed aside by Hodgson. Hodgson has won eight league titles in two countries with three clubs and coached the national teams of Switzerland, Finland and the United Arab Emirates. Instead critics focus on his unsuccessful spells in charge of Blackburn and, more recently, Liverpool while decrying his achievements with 'small' clubs such as Fulham and current side West Brom.

Hodgson has had spells in club football in England, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and Italy, where he was twice in charge of Inter Milan.

England has a friendly against Norway in Oslo on May 26 and a home fixture against Belgium a week later before a 23-man squad heads to the Euro 2012 base in Krakow, Poland.

England's group stage opener is against France on June 11 in Donetsk, Ukraine, followed by matches against Sweden and Ukraine.

The fact Hodgson has been appointed just six weeks from Euro 2012 gives him and the FA a ready-made excuse if England perform poorly in Poland and Ukraine.

The 64-year-old Hodgson cannot match Redknapp for 'man of the people' popularity and in having taken West Brom to 10th in the table this term was damned as 'Mr Average' by the Daily Mail.

Yet those who've played under him laud his preparation and tactics. (AP)