Ever since the World Cup, there has been a media-led witch-hunt against Fabio Capello. The press have performed an extraordinary volte-face to reimagine the once omnipotent Italian as a disaster. He’s non-communicative, he’s disorganised, he’s tactically unimaginative. Oh, and of course, he’s foreign.
Never mind the fact that Capello’s calamitous predecessor was Steve McClaren, a man who at the time of his appointment was still English and yet to undergo his transformation into “Schteve”. Cappello’s foreignness is, it turns out, a key factor in his failure at the World Cup. How typical of the inherently xenophobic English press to blame the one foreigner on the sidelines rather than the eleven Englishmen on the pitch. If any proof were needed of their bias, look at how Jermain Defoe escaped censure for his handball against Young Boys. The same lenience wasn’t offered to Thierry Henry – or even the diving Eduardo, in a similarly meaningless game this time last year, and one can’t help but feel that’s to do with their nationality.
Anyhow, in to this climate of discrimination and discontent, the FA’s Adrian Bevington has dropped a particularly pungent bombshell:
“We are working on the basis that Fabio will be with us until 2012. The view beyond that, based on the discussions I’ve been involved in, is that we should have an English manager after that. I think the English team should be managed by an English manager.”
Bevington, now managing director of Club England, was formerly the Head of Communications at the FA. He understands better than anyone the significance of such a statement. This is almost a verbal contract, binding he and the FA in to a commitment to appointment an Englishman in 2012 – whether or not they’re the best man for the job.
It is particularly foolish considering the paucity of candidates. There are thee competent English managers currently operating in the Premier League: Roy Hodgson, Sam Allardyce, and Harry Redknapp. Hodgson has just accepted a job at Liverpool, which arguably represents a greater and more enthralling challenge. By 2012, he’ll be 65 – retirement age – and arguably unwilling to return to the strain of international management. And all this assumes that his reputation and mental health survives two years at a Liverpool Football Club in decline.
Allardyce was interviewed for the job when it went to McClaren, and was famously laughed out of the FA on the back of his Powerpoint and pyrotechnics presentation. Whether or not he’d swallow his pride enough to reapply is one question. A bigger concern is whether or not his rough-and-tumble tactics are suited to the increasingly elegant game of International football.
Of the available candidates, Redknapp looks the most promising, but I suspect the FA simply won’t want to appoint a man with more skeletons in the closet than a fancy dress shop in the week before Halloween.
Bevington was unwise enough to use the term “English” rather than “British”, ruling out other potential candidates like Mark Hughes and Martin O’Neill, who’d otherwise be the favourite. So who are we left with? The charming, chubby but clueless Steve Bruce? Stewart Pearce, whose work experience placement with Fabio seems to have done little to increase his standing? There was a lot of fanfare about the forthcoming appointment of another English coach to work as part of the England set-up, but no-one has yet arrived. The cupboard is bare.
Ironically, based on the last few seasons there is one guy who has held an English passport who looks like he might be decent. He won the Dutch league with Twente and is now in charge at Wolfsburg: it’s our old friend Schteve McClaren.
Still, we can rule him out too. He’s Dutch now.
