Fabio Capello: Fabio's Inconvenient Truth

Sean O'Conor

"We do have good players, but we don't have 50, 60, 70 players to pick from any more…Some teams have less English players in them than foreign players. That's just the way the game has gone."

The truth hurts. On the occasion of Fabio Capello's first England squad announcement, Football Association chief executive Brian Barwick confirmed the goalposts really have moved in 2007 as the latest England coach embarks on his personal assault on ‘the impossible job'.

Barwick's admission was welcome, although his explanation conveniently absolved the game's governors like himself of any responsibility in having engineered this unhealthy scenario in the first place.

The FA have participated actively in the creation and growth of the Premier League, despite the two having starkly conflicting aims and objectives.

As a result of the FA's cowardly connivance, the national team's player pool began to dry up and England duly failed to qualify for Euro 2008. The Premier League is less a feeder for its mother country's starting eleven than an international league, which, like many of the world's top finance houses, is based in London, but has no loyalty to England.

One wonders what Capello, on his first tour of our grounds, was thinking as he ran his finger down the team sheets trying to find the English players. He certainly saw some fine football on show, from Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba and Cesc Fabregas etc. Shame they can't play for him.

Win, lose or draw against Switzerland on Wednesday, England's game needs serious change if we want to qualify for the next World Cup and beyond. When set against this inconvenient truth, Capello's appointment seems less than vital.

Barwick had promised a root and branch reform of the English game after the Croatia debacle, but in his latest pronouncement, he replaced that phrase with the need for a ‘front to back' reorganisation, presumably explaining the appointment of Capello at the apex.

There is still no timetable and no details of how this reformation will proceed, which given the history of England's international demise since the 1970s, inescapably leads one to suspect any pledge has been just another rush of hot air to keep the critics at bay. The future is still bleak, or at least nothing to get excited about.

Capello has not coached a single game yet, but I have no problem in sticking the knife in already for his ignorance of the real issues surrounding our failure to make it to the Alps this summer.

Capello's idea of England seems stuck in the ‘70s when he was a player, memorably netting against the Three Lions for Italy at Wembley in 1973.

From what little we can gather so far, he puts England's malaise down to a lack of desire. He is reported to have been surprised back in 1988 that England showed “nessuna rabbia” – no rage, when meekly bowing down to Marco Van Basten & the Netherlands in the European Championship. In other words, we need to imbibe the simplistic philosophy of Rhonda Byrne's bestseller ‘The Secret' - want something enough and you will get it.

While many from overseas adore the spectacle of English football, particularly if their own domestic leagues remain repositories of negative, cynical torpor - Italy's Serie A and Mexico's Primera Division spring readily to mind, they should not forget that all the high-speed, end-to-end passion play of our game has not brought the national team one iota of success since 1966.

So, surely there comes a point when you have to look yourself in the mirror and admit you have been driving in the wrong direction for the past 42 years. After however many years of hurt for England (do we have to change the words of ‘Three Lions' now?), isn't it common knowledge that our national style of play is obsolete?

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Does Fabio seriously want us to base our approach to South Africa 2010 qualification on the sort of all-out attack mentality to be found in Sunday leagues up and down the country, the English ‘rabbia' he so admires and expects from us?

‘Droit au but' (‘straight to goal') is Olympique de Marseille's motto, but unlike in England, the football at the Stade Velodrome moved on long ago.

Fabio's English is as yet rudimentary, so we can reasonably assume the word he used was mentalità, but that is not so easily translated as ‘mentality' in English. It is more attitude than state of mind. And we don't lack a winning or fighting attitude. The problem rather is that English footballers are still not encouraged to think outside the box, literally.

We are still suffering from the pseudo-religion preached by Charles Hughes, the FA's director of coaching for a quarter of a century. Hughes instilled long-ball tactics at the heart of his manuals, and made more than one disparaging comment about Brazil and passing football, even during the 1970 World Cup.

The multi-man moves displayed by Argentina at the 2006 finals, for instance, would still be unthinkable coming from England shirts. Given we cannot yet produce players with the extraterrestrial flair of Cristiano Ronaldo or Ronaldinho, we have to make up for it in other ways.

English players still play fairly predictably and in straight lines, unable to move beyond a one-dimensional view of the game. More encouragement of lateral thinking, awareness of the shape of both teams and rhythms of the game as a whole are therefore essential. Raw aggression is not enough.

We don't lag behind the rest in terms of pace, strength, fitness or basic technique, and we certainly don't lack the will to win, Fabio. It is in other areas where we have been bypassed by smaller nations like Croatia.

The thing is, you can't think clearly or deeply when you play at 100 miles per hour. Former Juventus star Fabrizio Ravanelli put his finger on it when playing for Middlesbrough in the mid-1990s.

English players run all the time, he said, but they can't beat Italians for explosiveness. Knowing when to turn on the gas makes more sense in the long run than having it on full blast the whole time.

From my own meagre experience as a Sunday league player in England and Italy, the contrast was clear. In England we are too impatient to get the ball forward and use aggression, while in Italy, they think more about what they are doing with the ball.

And of course, if we expect a bright future, then developing technique and tactical awareness must be emphasized more than winning at youth level.

English football needs new ideas in the world it finds itself in. It was regrettable, therefore, that someone like Sir Clive Woodward was politely ushered out of the back door at Southampton when he tried to bring some 21st century sports science ideas to an old English stalwart like Harry Redknapp.

England is now playing catch-up after its golden generation failed to qualify from a mediocre group for Euro 2008. With the best football in England now being played by foreigners, drastic decisions must be made regarding the foreign influx to the club game. A top foreign coach is an encouraging move therefore, but not if he believes all we need is to show more attitude and want to win more. The game outside England has moved on from the 1970s.

Playing to one's strengths has its own simple appeal, but when those strengths have been found out by the opposition again and again, it is surely time to try something different.

On Wednesday against Switzerland, the Wembley crowd will be baying for the sort of 5-0 thumping of Greece that greeted Terry Venables in his first match in charge. Chances are England will win, but will it count for much in the long term if we are not changing our national style of play?

I would rather see an England eleven trying new things with a view to competing in South Africa in two years' time and tournaments beyond that, and not worrying too much about entertaining the crowd for now or giving headlines to the brain-dead tabloids. As England fans, haven't we suffered enough already?

Sean O'Conor