Fabio replies to David Beckham's request to play for England again
Capello is the right man for the job if you base the credentials for being the right man on what he has achieved at club level. His CV is peerless and doesn't need repeating, the nagging worry I have is that it is now 33 years since England appointed a national manager who was responsible for winning our domestic league title. Howard Wilkinson doesn't count because he was only caretaker but you have to go back to 1974 and Don Revie. Revie didn't cover himself in glory did he, buggered off to the desert for a million quid tax free and died in shame rather than being remembered for leading an ordinary football side out of the old Second Division to the top of English and almost European football. The Leeds side that reached the 1975 European Cup Final under Jimmy Armfield was Revie's in all but name and should have beaten Bayern Munich in Paris but for a handful of very strange refereeing decisions.
Anyway my point is that we are failing to produce top quality managers who excel at the highest level. Allardyce, Curbishley, Redknapp, O'Neill, none of them have set the world alight at club level. Bolton under Big Sam played anti-football, Charlton didn't even make Europe and Harry Redknapp, for all his pals in the media, seriously under achieved at West Ham winning the Inter-Toto Cup with a group of players that included Joe Cole, Fat Frank, Michael Carrick, Jermain Defoe, Rio Ferdinand, Paolo Di Canio, Davor Suker, Shaka Hislop and those are just the ones we sold! Harry is supposedly a wheeler dealer and yet he famously turned down the chance of signing Marcus Stewart in favour of signing Marco Boogers. Stewart was the Premiership's top English born goalscorer in 2000-1 whereas Marco Boogers played one game at Old Trafford, got sent off and spent a year hiding in a caravan!
Look at the top of the Premiership now: French, Scots, Israeli, Swedish, Scottish, Spanish, Harry, Irish, Welsh. Now I firmly believe that you should always appoint the best man for the job but we need to see more English born managers getting top jobs. The reason for this is that it encourages manager's further down the scale to believe that they can one day land a top job. Too often in this country job's get passed around a select group of ex-pros who don't actually achieve very much in the long run. Steve Bruce, relegated twice, promoted twice, Bryan Robson - relegated twice, promoted once, Paul Jewell - relegated once. What did Birmingham learn by having Steve Bruce as manager? What has any club learned by having Bryan Robson as manager? These were good players and they shouldn't be lost to the game but have they made good managers? The answer to that question is that they haven't succeeded or failed which is where we are quite happy in this country just to bungle along.
The manager in the English Premiership who has done the most with the least resources available is Mark Hughes, he should be asked to help the national side in some capacity. Hughes has taken a non fashionable provincial club into Europe without spending huge transfer fees and on small, by Premiership standards, average gates. He knows the European scene having played in Spain and Germany and in club competitions for Man.Utd.
When Sven was appointed the FA said that he would have an assistant who would be groomed for the post, that man was Steve McLaren. McLaren is gone and Capello has a four man Italian hit squad to help him. It's been said that he should have an Englishman to help him, presumably because he's such a crap judge of player potential he can't be trusted to be let out on his own!
Capello is on nearly £6 million a year taking into account bonuses, it would be nice if he could actually leave the English game in a better state than when he arrived, and in the hands of somebody who might actually be good enough to have been offered the job in the first place if the F.A had a little more foresight.
3 comments:
I quite enjoyed him being at Real Madrid but I can't help thinking that the big grin is because of the six zeros before the decimal point in the salary. Sven wasn't worth it nor will Fab Fabio be (hoping to be proved wrong!)
Despite all you say about the home-grown managers at club level I believe that's precisely what is needed at international level: we know the players can play waht we need is soemone they're prepared to paly as a team for...needs a "little bit o this, little bi' o that, little bit of weeeehay" to quote the Fast Show
:-)
It's not so much the enormous salary as the bonuses and the get out of jail free card. £2.5 million for reaching a semi-final?
Capello will be good because he doesn't pander to ego's. Keegan and Sven both tried to be mates with the players, Hoddle kept away from them and was called aloof and McLaren wasn't the right man for the job at the time he was appointed.
I'm afraid I'm about a 1 on your scale, Paul. Football is in a position now where it's getting what it deserves. It's never been well run, has it? Imagine if the profession of accountancy were run like the F.A. Or even worse.... civil engineering? You design a bridge, it falls down, you get a 6 figure payout and then you go off and get another well paid job somewhere else!
What happens on the pitch still interests me and sometimes even exites me but all the off the pitch shenanegins... ... forget it!
(Jaded, Sunderland)
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