Italy
Serie A
AC Milan
So, it looks like Fabio Capello is the anointed savior of the English game, the one to right the wrongs of 40 years of futility and bring some much needed organization, a steely desire, tactical nous, and most importantly his outsized personality to put the overpaid slackers on his squad to rest?
Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet, despite his past success for Italy he hasn’t kicked a ball “for reals” in a competitive match in 30 years, and he won’t have the luxury of farming out a Ronaldo to Milan to save his wayward locker-room. What he’ll bring is a “winning at all costs” mentality, and yes, tactically he’ll be more astute and take better advantage of the weaknesses of an opponent (you won’t see a lone striker and 10 men behind the ball against an Andorra or a San Marino like his predecessor), but more importantly this won’t be battle for or against a particular formation or a particular player.
He won’t resort to 4-4-2 as a given; he’ll want the team to be adaptable, disciplined comfortable as much with 4-5-1, 4-3-3, or better yet just call it a situational, positional philosophy, as even the idea of a numbered labeling system for postional play is a bit quaint and outdated in the modern game.
Lastly, he won’t be dragged into a Lampard v Gerrard type debate which was the death of his predecessors. Don Fabio isn’t really the sort who admires or even trusts the mercurial geniuses that can change matches by themselves; cue the Francesco Totti footage in his Roma days or the David Trezeguet bits from his Juve misadventure, or better yet just post a picture of O Fenomeno on site just to get a clearer picture.
No, he’ll be looking for a way to find a distant English relative or annulling the previous Brazilian service for Emerson I gather. Impossible I know, but he’ll go looking for his two top holding midfielders nonetheless. He’ll play Gerrard as his support striker, and he’ll sit Lampard or vice versa if one or the other is off his game, and he won’t blink or question himself much even if the debate goes on in the background; a debate that I think exists because either midfielder’s handlers want it to exist at the expense of the other.
He’ll scour the more English clubs, he’ll draw from a larger and wider talent pool and he’ll identify the players who have some skill on the ball, and despite what the British numpties who have come out of the woodwork to lament their own lack of opportunity to land a big job, he’ll play an English style pressing game and most importantly, he’ll win.
It’s a great hire, it’s one that should have been made a long time ago, and it’s right in preparation for the next World Cup, but 5 years from now when Capello is 66 and off on a Tuscan holiday will England be better off as a footballing nation? Well, they solved the branch portion of their managerial search, but I’m afraid they stopped short of purging the roots.
Mando from FF