James Lawton: Cantona's elevation an insult to football's truly famous

You may have wondered, as I did with some fervour, precisely which collection of idiots voted Paul Gascoigne into the new Football Hall of Fame ahead of eight members of England's one and only World Cup-winning team – not to mention several legions of brilliant Scottish, Welsh and Irish players who took the trouble to nurture and protect their extraordinary gifts.

Remarkably, one phone call yesterday yielded the full list of shame, which, fascinatingly as it turns out, is not largely comprised of gibbering disc jockeys, radio phone-in hosts and former political spin doctors. In fact, those yay-saying for Gazza might fairly be described as a potential brains trust of the battered old national game.

However, in a committee room seething with knowledge and experience it was decided that Gascoigne, the man-child wrecker of a thousand dreams, had superior claims to a place in the first shrine of the English game than Gary Lineker, the second-highest all-time scorer for England who went through an entire career without a single yellow card; the magnificently enduring Alan Shearer; and Sir Geoff Hurst, who many will no doubt remember scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final.

The panellists are fairly described as "distinguished" by the organisers of the poll, the National Football Museum which, not inappropriately, is housed in the Tom Finney Stand at Deepdale, home of Preston North End, the former "Invincibles" and founder members of the Football League. The names are Sir Bobby Charlton, Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Bobby Robson, Sir Tom Finney, Jackie Charlton, Jimmy Armfield, Brian Clough, Alan Hansen, Jimmy Hill, Mark Lawrenson, Gary Lineker, David Platt, Jim Smith and Terry Venables.

A formidable gang, indeed, but we surely have to ask what they were all thinking about? One sees the influence of Ferguson, no doubt, in the choice of Eric Cantona as one of the first 22 male players to be ushered through the doors of permanent fame (there is, incidentally, not a whiff of controversy in the choice of the sole woman, Lily Parr, who scored more than a thousand goals for the Dick Kerr Ladies and once drew a crowd of 50,000 before an anxious Football Association closed down the rival petticoat peril.)

Ferguson of course sees Cantona as a huge talismanic factor in the building of his own regime at Old Trafford, but a more objective view might be that, whatever the Frenchman's value to Manchester United, a career record that included eight dismissals and an assault on a spectator sits rather uneasily in any pantheon of the game. The French will again be aghast at the English aggrandisement of a player they never forgave for costing them a World Cup place and generally behaving like an overgrown brat. It is also true that under any hard and comprehensive analysis Cantona, despite his psychological value as a catalyst of a new, young team, scarcely flies through any test of history. Hands up anyone who remembers him getting more than an odd kick in any of United's big European games?

At this point it may be worth reporting an anguished phone call from one panellist yesterday. He was so unenthusiastic about the choice of Gascoigne – whose contribution to Lazio, Rangers, Middlesbrough and Everton and England was shockingly slight after his catastrophic, self-destructing performance in the 1991 FA Cup final – and Cantona he demanded that his name be omitted from the list of voters. When told that it would be impossible to grant his request, he groaned slowly, but, as one pointed out, he knows who he is... some other voters might be seen to be in need of providing documentary proof.

You may ask, who really cares? The short answer is anyone who has a feeling for football and understands the old truth that if you do not understand, and respect, what happened yesterday you are unlikely to have much of a clue about what the future should hold. Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, was at Sunday's celebration and is enthusiastic about the concept of a Hall of Fame.

Though diplomatically non-committal about the selections of Gascoigne and Cantona, he remains a supporter of the idea of recognising the great men of football's past. "The first time I saw a football museum was in Belgrade in 1988," recalls Taylor, "and I was very touched when I went to the Red Star stadium and saw that a centrepiece of the museum was a tribute to Manchester United, who played their last game in the city before the Munich disaster. I wondered how it was that United could be honoured in a foreign land in such a way and not in their own country. So in principle I'm a great supporter of this Hall of Fame."

The principle is fine, but the practice is in danger of becoming an insulting farce. Few could argue with the majority of the original selections – voted in along with Gascoigne and Cantona were Gordon Banks, George Best, Dixie Dean, John Charles, Bobby Charlton, Kenny Dalglish, Peter Doherty, Duncan Edwards, Tom Finney, Jimmy Greaves, Johnny Haynes, Kevin Keegan, Bryan Robson, Denis Law, Nat Lofthouse, Billy Wright, Stanley Matthews, Peter Shilton, Bobby Moore and Dave Mackay.

The trouble is that the choices of Gascoigne and Cantona sabotage any sense of a bottom-line standard. Both players had huge gifts, but under consideration here is a body of work – a consistency of achievement and discipline which is plainly lacking in both careers.

If you have a Hall of Fame, you also have to have a bank of memory and research. It cannot be a random and in this case flippant thing. If you have a first selection of six managers – in Sunday's case Sir Matt Busby, Brian Cough, Ferguson, Bob Paisley, Sir Alf Ramsey and Bill Shankly – how can you ignore the claims of Herbert Chapman, the father of Arsenal; Stan Cullis, who led English football into the wide world of international club football with his superb Wolves team; and Bill Nicholson, architect of the great Spurs Double-winning side?

You cannot really do it. If the work of Chapman, Cullis and Nicholson is not recognised now, when will it happen?

You cannot have a Hall of Fame which plucks out talented but historically slight figures like Gascoigne and Cantona and ignores a century of much deeper achievement. It is too much of a job to speak for all the ghosts of football but let us remember a few... Billy Meredith, Alex James, Hughie Gallacher, Cliff Bastin, Eddie Hapgood, Raich Carter, Wilf Mannion, Neil Franklin, Jimmy Delaney, Johnny Morris, Jack Rowley, Stan Pearson and Charlie Mitten (just to mention one Manchester United forward line), Johnny Carey, Tommy Lawton, Roy Bentley, Ivor Allchurch, Cliff Jones, Danny Blanchflower, Joe Mercer, Stan Mortensen, John White, Bobby Collins, Bobby Johnstone, Roger Byrne, Liam Whelan, Billy Bremner, Johnny Giles...

None of these names were recognised by the Hall of Fame. What can you do? Just sigh and assure a member of a "distinguished" panel defining the greatness of English football that his secret is safe with me.

Venables paying price for Leeds' collective shortfalls

However it turns out for Terry Venables at Elland Road, there should somewhere down the road be a close examination of all that shaped the crisis of a major football club.

The roles of Peter Ridsdale, the chairman, and David O'Leary, the former manager who now says that he is "proud" to be remembered fondly by a section of the Leeds United crowd which would have made the terraces of the Colosseum seem like the lawn of a vicar's tea party, and certain players who from time to time have spoken of their desire to be considered world-class performers, should be assessed along with that of the embattled Venables.

And if it should be that Venables does fall, either by boardroom action prompted by the yells of the crowd or by his own sword, it should also be remembered that his problems came to a head three months into a season which started with him being required to sell two of his key players and, at a time of maximum pressure, was marked by his "friend" and backer Ridsdale suggesting that six more players would have to be sold at the halfway point.

When all this re-examination is properly considered, even Venables' most vicious critics may, in all decency, have cause to pause. Whether they will is of course an entirely different matter.