“Fabio Capello, you are charged with being a terrible England manager, under-performing at major tournaments, costing the FA a fortune and failing to live up to your reputation as a winner. How do you plead?”
Not guilty, and rightfully so.
Wednesday’s news of Fabio Capello’s resignation was met with seemingly unreserved joy from most. Sceptical England fans and Journalists happy to see the back of the Italian. But was it all bad under Capello? Really?
Whenever any football manager leaves his job we’re fed the same story each and every time. ‘It’s a results business and results just weren’t good enough’. But is that true of Fabio? People say he wasn’t good enough, but the stats do seem to be on his side.
The key figure would seem to be 67%. As in, Fabio Capello won 67% of his games as England manager. How does that compare to his predecessors? Pretty well, very well in fact. Actually, Fabio’s win percentage is the best. Of all of England’s permanent managers Fabio ranks number one. If this is truly a results business then you’d imagine Fabio has done enough to earn the respect of everyone based on that statistic.
What about major tournaments? He’s won nothing. I can’t argue there. But then which England managers have won anything? One by my count. Sir Alf Ramsey, 1966. Different era, hard to imagine it being relevant now. Our Euro 2012 squad won’t have many survivors from the 66 team!
Sven won nothing, Hoddle won nothing, McLaren didn’t even get us there. Terry Venables left the England job with his reputation intact. But even El Tel didn’t win anything. He got one round further than Hoddle and Sven, but can’t that just be put down to home advantage? Venables had us playing at Euro 96 in a packed Wembley stadium and still we fell at the semi-final stage.
So was it Capello’s pay packet that piled the pressure on him? One of the highest paid managers in world football. Millions thrown at him by the FA. Is this why we demand results? Capello’s pay packet, quite frankly, wasn’t his problem. He only got paid what the FA offered him.
Not in any way was it Capello’s job to say “no, that’s too much money”. Why would he? Why would anyone? When Fabio was negotiating a contract, getting a good deal for the FA wasn’t near the top of his list of priorities. He got paid a huge salary, but that’s hardly his fault. I don’t think any of us would have turned it down. So his salary shouldn’t really be used as a rope with which to hang him.
But, he’s meant to be a winner. He’d won trophies in Italy and Spain, with huge clubs like AC Milan and Real Madrid. Why not with England? It’s true, he does have a proven track record. But maybe this says more about the state of English football and our national team. It’s not as if he took over a winning team and sent them quickly downhill.
In fact he took over a team that had missed out on qualification for the Euro’s and took them to the World Cup. So when he took us to a major tournament was he expected to win it? As far as our press and our fans are concerned, yes. It’s hard to see why though.
It doesn’t make sense to me that after decades of winning nothing we all assume that the next tournament will be ‘the one’. Maybe it’s time we took a long hard look at our England team and said “you know what, we’re not as good as we think we are”. We’re a nation of naïve footballers, where 8 year olds are taught to clear the ball and ‘get stuck in’, not learn to play the ball.
We seem to have this impression that we have the divine right to be challenging for all major international honours but what are we basing this on? All the evidence we have collected from past World Cups and European Championships would suggest that we are highly unlikely to win either.
We think a lot of our players. We have some of the best in the world we think. But when the Ballon D’or comes round there aren’t many English players in the frame are there? None who compete with the Messi’s, Ronaldo’s, Xavi’s and Iniesta’s. When we come up against a team like Slovenia we assume we will sweep them aside because we know our players but have never heard of any of theirs.
Of course we know ours better, we watch them every week. Where has this arrogance come from? That we assume we are the better team when we know nothing of our opponents.
When we go into a tournament we have ourselves down amongst the favourites. The rest of the world probably doesn’t fancy us quite as much though. Why would they? What have we won in the last 40 years? Maybe Fabio Capello wasn’t a man underachieving with a good team. Maybe he’s just a good coach getting the very best out of the limited resources he has.
Capello isn’t perfect, he’s made mistakes as any manager would. His handling of Rio Ferdinand and the captaincy was particularly poor. But had we have won something then all would have been forgiven. The FA undermined his position by stripping John Terry of the captaincy without consulting him and he has resigned as a result. Who can blame him?
I think it’s fair to say that Fabio Capello took England as far as anyone could. He’s proved before that he’s one of the best in the world at what he does. Rather than criticising him for the poor performance of our team we should be looking at the situation and saying “wow, if a proven winner like Fabio Capello can’t make us win a major tournament then maybe no one can”.
Our extremely slim chances of winning the Euro’s may have just evaporated.