Fabio Capello: Fabio the tonic in Barwick's last chance saloon

Sean O'Conor

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FA Chief Executive Brian Barwick certainly had his reasons for rushing Fabio Capello into the England manager's job, as Soccerphile can exclusively reveal.

Only a few days ago, there were five names in the frame and the Football Association insisted publicly it was in no rush to appoint anyone.

Yet suddenly Capello has a lavish contract done and dusted and his four-strong Italian backroom staff are packing their bags for London.

Even the most hardcore traditionalists and dyed in the wool xenophobes in the home of football have had to admit grudging praise for the Italian's stunning credentials.

Surely the man responsible for league titles with Milan, Juventus, Roma and Real Madrid and the architect of the most devastating Champions League Final victory in recent memory (Milan's 4-0 demolition of Barcelona in 1994) is up to the job.

Chairman Geoff Thompson was in Japan at the time the decision was made to guillotine the selection process, and had to rouse himself in the early hours to listen to Barwick and Director of Football Development Trevor Brooking explain why the 61-year-old Italian was the right man to hire.

Capello does not show up at his desk until the 7th of January next year and his first test is a friendly with Switzerland on the 6th of February, so why the rush?

A trio of recent events swayed Barwick's hand. One was the catastrophe of losing to Croatia at Wembley three weeks ago, which precipitated the end of Steve McClaren and reflected badly on the man who had appointed him, Barwick having speciously claimed the Middlesbrough coach was his first choice candidate.

Second was Jose Mourinho's toying with Soho Square over the past two weeks. The former Chelsea boss was the people's choice and the first manager Barwick formally contacted, but his withdrawal this week clearly implied he was only using the FA's interest as leverage to take over at a big European club in the New Year instead.

If England could be trumped by Milan or Barcelona, went the logic, then what was there to stop another Champions League giant poaching Capello or Marcello Lippi, while the FA board dithered and deliberated over their man.

Lastly, the media impatience with the FA after failing to make the European Championship convinced Barwick that a hasty move was better than a drawn-out consultation process.

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Barwick in particular has sore memories of the TV crews, who nabbed him sweating and looking stressed and humiliated as he landed back in England following an unsuccessful pursuit of Luis Felipe Scolari in Portugal before the 2006 World Cup.

The former TV controller is not fond of seeing tabloid journalists waiting outside his house in the morning and saw in the swift appointment of a man with as shining a CV as Capello, an opportunity to get the hacks off his back, after the deluge of criticism heaped upon him and the FA following the Croatia debacle.

While Barwick wants to hold on to his job, he knows his reputation has taken a severe battering over the past two years and that several people have called for his head.

Soccerphile can exclusively reveal that none other than Sebastian Coe, spearhead of the London 2012 Olympic Games, was approached a few days ago in London and asked to mount a challenge to take over the FA.

Lord Coe's love of football is no secret. He is a Chelsea season-ticket holder and was recently invited by Sepp Blatter onto FIFA's ethics committee, which has yet to meet incidentally, let alone probe the deeds of the sport's governing body's notorious and ironically named Vice-President, Jack Warner.

Another potential challenger to Barwick and Thompson, Soccerphile can reveal, is England's 2018 World Cup ambassador Richard Caborn.

The former Labour sports minister was allegedly angling to head the FA recently, but faced stern opposition from former Tory adversary and FA board member Sir Brian Mawhinney, the chairman of the Football League, and cooled his interest.

Hiring Capello was a good move, let us not forget. The much-travelled coach comes with impeccable credentials and has publicly admitted for years that he wanted to coach in England.

Given he was in charge of the amazing Milan team of the early to mid-1990s, and also bagged championships at three other legendary clubs, one wonders what, beyond scoring a famous winner for Italy at Wembley in 1973, attracted him to underachieving England for so long.

Have the deficiencies in the English game, which have been cruelly exposed on a regular basis ever since Hungary ran riot at Wembley in 1953, failed to fully register with him?

For while the nation's airwaves, column inches and message boards debate Capello's coaching philosophy and man-management skills vis-à-vis the English 'stars' he is inheriting, his hasty rubber-stamping has also placed English football's long-term failings conveniently in the shadow.

The technical shortcomings of the national style of play are still alive and kicking from top to bottom of the pyramid, but most clearly exposed by the national team.

The apex of England's club game, the Premier League, is stuffed with overseas players, and increasingly foreign coaches too, while two years have elapsed since plans for a glittering National Training Centre, inspired by France's famous Clairefontaine complex, were put on indefinite hold.

One man alone cannot wave a wand and sweep all these troubles away. In the bitter aftermath of the Croatia defeat and McClaren's sorry exit, Barwick rightly promised a "root and branch" reform of the national team set-up, but that promise has been all but forgotten in the light of today's high-profile signing.

The FA have essentially acted like a Premier League club in bypassing the English system to flash their wallet at a big foreign name. So far so good - Capello is hitherto every much the proven winner Barwick said he was.

But the similarity ends here as he cannot buy in players from overseas for his team anymore. A great coach can extract the best out of moderate talent, but cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. While England's huge football talent base is anything but a sow's ear, it is clearly in need of attention given the influx of foreign players to its clubs' academies, let alone its professional starting elevens.

It is up to the FA to resume their quest to invest in the grassroots of the game, to sow the seeds that will bloom into the sort of successful national team players a coach like Capello can get the best out of, a vast crop of talented performers that will make him spoilt for choice.

The Italian will have cost the FA £26 million should he remain in charge through Euro 2012, money which Barwick is banking on to rescue England's international reputation, as well as his own job.

Sean O'Conor