Fabio Capello flies in this morning and will meet the FA at 3pm.
If hired, he will be the best England manager since Bobby Robson.
He doesn’t have an agent and he doesn’t read the press.
He is his own man.
Always has been.
He’s not scared of star players or the media.
Capello will restore the heartbeat of English football. He will sort out the egos and make them play as a team. He will get the Three Lions roaring.
He’s 61 and hasn’t coached a national team before but he wants the job and there are no English candidates.
For once, Brian Barwick seems to be on the right track and the FA are working within the time-frame they laid down after they sacked Steve McClaren. They realise that a coach of Fabio Capello’s calibre is rarely available when the England job is vacant.
SO THINGS ARE LOOKING UP !
Arsene Wenger rates Capello very highly and says he sticks to his guns.
Arsene said, “I have known Fabio for a long time and the quality of the candidate is outstanding. The only problem I think he could have is with the language – I do not know how good his English is because a big part of the job is to deal with the media – maybe a massive part.
“However, he can deal with the media pressure as he done that before – he was at Real Madrid and in Italy as well where there is big media pressure in the big clubs.As for the technical part, you do not have to worry about him. As a national team manager, you can only deal with the generation you have – if you have a good generation you can do well.”
“I feel Fabio is a strong man and a strong character. He has a clear idea of what he wants and when he is convinced of something he goes to the end of it. I believe he is a strong winner and is a guy who is convinced of the methods that he uses. I believe a manager is strong when he swims against the tide – I feel he can do that and that is quite a needed quality in this country.”
This morning Seedorf was interviewed by Radio 5 Live and asked about Mourinho and Capello, I’m told. He said two interesting things. He said Mourinho was excellent at Porto but has since developed a lack of respect for other managers. Asked if Capello would tolerate the WAGs and hangers-on, Seedorf said he would rather use lesser players who would work harder for the team.
Let’s face it, Sven-Goran Eriksson played too defensively. He was a groupie who tiptoed round big stars.
He just picked his icons – Beckham, Owen, Gerrard, Lampard – so we rarely had a good blend. If we had a balanced team it was because some of his icons were injured. And survivalist Steve McClaren was son of Sven. He was Sven-lite. He was a terrible appointment who was, incredibly, installed for four years and dismissed after 18 matches and failure to qualify for Euro 2008.
For almost seven years, England have played timidly !!!
Clearly, Capello is aware that our so-called “golden generation” are technically limited athletic gladiators. But his England will not play timidly. He wants the job, relishes the challenge, and will not ask for £6m a year to do it, as Jose Mourinho did. The Special One is a clever puppet-master who manipulates the British press, who love to be manipulated
AC Milan perfected the pressing game under Arrigo Sacchi and Capello took over the Baresi-Rijkaard-Gullit-Van Basten team.
When you watched them compress space, playing a high line, you realised that pressing is attacking when you don’t have the ball. Pressing is having Albertini and Desailly winning the ball in the warzone of centrefield and playing it hard and early to dangerous goalscorers.
In the whole of football history the greatest example of pressing in a big match was the European Cup Final when Capello’s AC Milan hammered Johann Cruyff’s Barcelona 4-0 and three of the goals came from pressing : winning the ball in the Barcelona half of the field. That fact is little appreciated by so-called experts and armchair tacticians : three of the goals came from pressing in that 1994 final.
One other thing that you don’t know : Berlusconi picked Capello out as leader and had him working in his company, learning a lot of stuff, grooming him for the future. Say what you like about the appalling Berlusconi, Milan have been a great club since he took control.
But Capello did not learn how to manage from Sacchi, who coached Milan from 1987 to 1991, before Capello took over until 1996. He learned what he knows about man-management from one of the all-time legends of twentieth century football, Nils Liedholm, the marvellous Swede who won four Serie A titles with AC Milan as a player, and captained Sweden in the 1958 World Cup Final.
England have friendly games in February and March. We don’t have many good players, our coaching at grassroots is hopeless, and we never built Burton, the national training centre.
But at least we know that if Fabio Capello coaches England, we will qualify for the 2010.
He’s not as bland and negative as Sven, so he will restore the heartbeat of English football. He will organise, motivate, scream from the technical area, gesticulate, get his points across. He is a winner who has played with great players and coached great players. He knows what he’s doing. I don’t worry whether he is good enough for England, I worry whether the players are good enough for him.