England the great under-achievers

It is one thing for Capello to teach the inglesi how to play football. After all, for years now, the same inglesi have provided us all (non-English, that is) with moments of pure schadenfreude.  Time after time, they have come into World Cup or European Championship finals tournaments with a seemingly tough, talented squad, backed by an army of not always well-behaved fans and celebrated by a populist media happily predicting a great final victory.

Time after time, it has all gone wrong.  

For 44 years now, England has not delivered. In desperation, as well all know, the English FA opted to resolve the problem by bringing in foreign coaches, first Swede Sven Goran Eriksson and then Capello, to solve the riddle of international under-performance.

At the moment, all the indications are that Capello is very much on the right track. Those who every four years look forward to yet another great English World Cup "cock-up" might well be disappointed in South Africa this summer. Capello's England look hungry, mean, totally professional and utterly competitive.

All of that we understand. Given the talent in the English squad (Rooney, Lampard, Gerrard, Ferdinand, Terry etc), Capello's success thus far is hardly a surprise. No one "thinks" a better game of football than a good Italian coach. Mix English true grit with Italian strategic cunning and what do you have? A winning combination, of course.

That much, we could all have predicted. What few could ever have imagined is that, two years into the job, Capello would be widely lauded for his uncompromising moral stance. There are standards of deportment and decorum for an English gentleman, or in this case English national team captain, and it takes an Italian to enforce them, swiftly and without equivocation. A nation holds its head high again, pride restored, Rule Britannia and... all thanks to an Italian? Curiouser and curiouser.

Yet, for those of us who have long known Capello, his handling of the Terry affair came as no surprise, and for two very obvious reasons. 

First, he has long been a fully paid-up member of the sergeant-major school of football coaches. Second, in the best Italian traditions, he was always going to base his decision, not on moral grounds, but rather on realpolitik considerations - what is best for me and my team.

Capello is the boss

In other words, the Capello hard line comes as no surprise to observers of Italian football. After all, this is the coach who once put Dutchman Ruud Gullit off the team bus at AC Milan on the weekend of a Juventus-Milan game. He is the same coach who publicly branded Antonio Cassano a "rabbit" when the latter stormed out of a training session at AS Roma.

He is the coach who paid little or no attention to striker Vincenzo Montella when the Roma player angrily kicked a plastic bottle in his face during a game against Napoli, right at the climax of a 2001 league title contest, which Roma eventually won. Capello's thinking at the time, much to the annoyance of Montella, was that the striker was best used as a substitute. Montella, clearly, did not agree.

The point about pontiff Capello's decision on Terry is that he has looked at the whole nationwide fuss created by the player's sexual peccadilloes and decided that it would be better for "me" (Capello) and the team, if Terry was reduced to the lay status, i.e. stripped of the captaincy. 

Gazzetta Dello Sport's long-time London correspondent, Giancarlo Galavotti, put it this way:

"Capello knows all too well that Terry is the best captain he could have had so Terry stays in the team, with all his talent, albeit without the captain's armband which might be a talisman for the English but which for Capello is little more than a minor detail..."

Capello is smart enough to realize the significance of the armband on English popular opinion.  He does not need months and months of the "Terry Affair" as part of England's build-up to South Africa, so he simply nipped it in the (admittedly sizeable) bud. In the process, he reminded everyone (in the England camp) who is boss, whilst holding onto one of his key players. 

A very good 12 minutes of work, we would suggest.