Beckham and the Century-Makers

Although I’m not the only one pleased to see Beckham make it to his century of England caps, most commentators aren’t. In particular, it’s said over and over again that Beckham isn’t worth the honour when put up against his “colleagues” Shilton, Moore, Charlton and Wright.

That’s my instinctive reaction too. At least it is at first. Moore and Charlton were both World Cup winners, and but for illness might have been twice over. Shilton has Ray Clemence to thank for not passing 150 caps or more in his twenty years as an international. And Billy Wright.. has long been swallowed by the football nostalgia movement.

But add to that the suggestion that Beckham is long past his best, and should make way for a younger man, and add to that the suggestion that Beckham hasn’t been good enough for England for some time, and I part company.

I’m going to address these things in reverse order, beginning with the idea that Beckham is a long time past his best England performances.

The problem Beckham faces in this respect is that his best performance for England was the extraordinary, phenomenal one that it was. There is no doubt, in any sane minds, that Beckham v Greece in 2001 was the outstanding England performance of modern times.

Where’s the fabled John Terry performance? I can think of Sol Campbell ones, and Terry Butcher ones, but none for England from the slit-eyed man with scrub hair. Or the Gerrard one? Do we have to go back to “5-1″ for that? Or the Lampard one? I can think of recent Michael Owen performances, but he’s another man the oafs want to defenestrate. Lampard’s relatively minor annus mirabilis was four years ago.

If Beckham isn’t good enough, who’s better? Which colleagues’ performances have left his so far behind?

What of the other century men? I’ll take them in turn.

Peter Shilton

He, and Gordon Banks before him, stand out not only in English goalkeeping history but world goalkeeping history. But even Homer etc., and Shilton was keeping in both of the matches against Poland in 1973-4 that saw England fail to qualify for the West Germany World Cup. It does feel harsh to suggest, 34 years later, that he might have done better at Wembley once Norman Hunter had missed his tackle, because Shilton was part of a quiet golden age in England’s defence between 1982 and 1990. There is no ball-between-the-legs-against Scotland, no famous flaps, just endless hard work and a reliability that was always taken for granted. Why Liverpool never came for him will always be a mystery to me.

Shilton was worth his caps, and retired from internationals at exactly the right time. Which brings us on to…

Billy Wright

Wright hails from an era that was strange in its giving out of caps. He wasn’t the best defender of his day. He played in both of the gigantic 1953-4 humiliations against the Hungarians, and his most remembered passage of play came in the first of the two, when Puskas sent him flying in the wrong direction. On the other hand, he skippered the best ever England international team, that serendipitous 46-48 group which also boasted Raich Carter, Stan Matthews, Stan Mortenson, Tommy Lawton, Tom Finney and Wilf Mannion. Later, he skippered the 55-58 side of Edwards, Byrne and Taylor that, but for Munich, would surely have starred in the World Cup in Sweden.

But what of himself? It’s almost as though he were captain in the cricketing sense, a fixture purely on those grounds, kept going by avoiding injury and delaying retirement. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, but it’s noticeable that of our centenarians, Wright is the only one who has never been considered one of the greats of the game, whereas he’s the one of the group who played alongside great players the most.

But he married a singer. No, Beckham’s done more, and been through more, for his hundred than Billy Wright.

What about…

Bobby Charlton

Bobby Charlton, of course, scored 49 goals for England, a record that sits waiting for Michael Owen’s next blue streak. Beckham’s only managed 17, the last one coming two years ago in the World Cup. But Charlton’s international goals come in a lump at the beginning of his international career. As a goalscorer, he thrived alongside Jimmy Greaves, not Geoff Hurst or Martin Peters. Charlton’s last 17 international goals took him six years to compile. Nevertheless, it was during this period, comparatively late in the day that Charlton truly came to be accepted as an international. Philip Larkin said of John Betjeman that his greatest achievement was to become Betjeman. Much the same could be said of Charlton, who did it during the 1966 World Cup. After his goals against Mexico and Portugal, all criticism of his inconsistency and selfishness on the pitch, so common before, fell away and were soon forgotten. So complete was his rehab that defeat to West Germany in 1970 is put down in part to his being taken off. Apparently, he’d kept Beckenbauer out of the game (Der Kaiser had in fact scored before Charlton left the field).

Did Charlton hang on too long? Three goals in his last nineteen internationals is comparable to Beckham’s three in his last 25. Charlton was 32 when he was retired by Sir Alf Ramsey, 35 when he eventually retired altogether, something he later felt he’d done too early (he was almost certainly right about this). No, in other words. There’d have been more, had he only realized it. Beckham knows there’s something valuable left in him, and won’t make Charlton’s mistake.

On the other hand…

Bobby Moore

Moore was Ramsey’s skipper as Beckham was Ericksson’s. He was England’s outstanding player in their outstanding performance, the 1-0 defeat to Brazil in 1970 at which international football peaked. He made England’s third goal in the 1966 Final with that last, long, sweeping pass for Hurst to run onto.

But he was only just into the nineties in terms of caps when the real rot set in for England. Moore skippered England against West Germany and Netzer in April 1972, and then there was this the following year - it’s at about 2:40 :-

Moore was dropped after that, only for Norman Hunter to repeat the error in the return match at Wembley. There’d be three more internationals, then an Indian summer at Fulham ending with a Wembley Cup Final. Life could have been fairer to Moore. He’d had to recover from cancer in his early career, which must have chopped years off his best playing days. Had any of the myriad chances gone in at Wembley, he’d have had an appropriate send-off at a World Cup Finals, as Charlton had had. (But for the string of injuries that raddled England in 2005-6, perhaps Beckham would have had his). But nevertheless, there is not the sense of unfinished business about Moore that there is with Beckham. Four months ago, this:

But there’s one piece of history that David Beckham can never claim. Because he wasn’t the first Englishman to score at the new Wembley. That was this man - and on that note..

France 1 England 0

I really don’t know. Do you?

England played on a Wednesday night, having had all of two days together, away from home and against one of the strongest teams in Euro 2008. And came away with a single goal defeat, France having had to depend on a penalty.

That sounds quite good, but England didn’t play well for much of the game. Unless, of course, that actually is as well as they can play, and one begins to wonder now if that is actually the case.

Win or lose, though, I’m thoroughly enjoying Fabio Capello, yet there are things that he’s doing that strike me as counter-productive. Let’s begin with the enjoyment.

John Terry being comprehensively hung out to dry. If the stories about his parking in a disabled bay are true - if the stories about his urinating over the bar in a night club are true - to say nothing of the others - then Capello has been instant karma. Terry’s “captaincy” was everything I don’t believe about the game: he was a fantasy figure for the press, a plastic Ingerland action man who, when you pulled his string, told you lies about what it had been like under Billy Wright, Kevin Keegan and Terry Butcher. The rousing team talks and the on-field shouting we were promised had no visible impact upon the team at all. Do you want to know why? It’s because they don’t work… (And what bull Terry talks anyway. I’ve taken to changing channel when he comes on.)

It crosses my mind that Capello might very well be teasing John Terry. Getting the other players to toss the captaincy around over his head as he jumps and chases for it: pulling him off in favour of Joleon Lescott. The whole Rio Ferdinand thing. The message seems to be, “get over yourself.” Or else, there’s no message and it’s all just vindictive. I’ll be happy either way.

Telling Beckham to play on. The English press deserve to have “DB” make it to 150 caps. Were I manager, I’d keep picking him, just to punish them for their little-Englander moment after the 2006 World Cup and its dire consequences. Don’t worry about 2010 David; make sure you’re fit for 2014. The press were out there again today, waving his obituaries. They’ll never get it, but until they never get it, they must be taught a lesson.

Not picking Sven’s rejects. Do you remember the outrage in 2006 when messers. Defoe, Bent, etc., were left behind in favour of Theo Walcott? So many English forwards “deserved to go” - Johnson’s another. Well, it’s now two years on, and not one of the players abandoned on the beach has done anything to suggest that their omission wasn’t entirely appropriate. The unlucky man of 2006, Dean Ashton, is, according to good sources, in receipt of assurances regarding his international future from Capello and Baldini. (The unlucky man of 2007 too; so many injuries, always it seems at the point where his international career is about to begin).

Reversing Steve McClaren’s reforms. The return of jackets and ties and proper shoes and decent eating habits. I can’t have been the only one to think that abandoning all of this was a bad idea. Sir Clive Woodward sought to make England rugby a glorious, elite experience, different and better for the players than their life with their clubs, so that players would aspire to England and do all they could to stay there. Much of Woodward’s work was dumped the minute he was gone - and look at the chaos and football-esque indecision in England rugby now. (At least they show signs of becoming aware of themselves now, but it’s about time).

But there are other things about Capello that I’m not so sure about.

Reading the team sheet out on the bus. This might be a temporary measure. Given the paucity of international players who are also English, Capello inherits Sven’s squad until either they all die of old age or young players begin to assert themselves. Given that Stuart Pearce turns out to have been born for the job of Under-21 England Coach (and he deserves to be that good at it), the latter is the more likely, but not yet. So Capello needs to use everything he can think of to differentiate what has gone before with what happens now. It has to become new and fresh again, albeit at cost. Because if you don’t know the team in advance, there’s less you can do to prepare, to become used to your team mates, to develop automatic understanding with them. As it is, the players are in the dark until the last minute, and have to maintain their training levels right up until they climb onto the Leyland Lion and growl off towards the Empire Stadium.

Picking players on form alone. This isn’t what’s happening, in actual fact. If it were, Nigel Reo-Coker would have played, as would Ashley Young. No: Capello is working his way through the limited number of players available to him in a methodical way, and his squads reflect that.

If he were to pick largely on form, I’d complain. England players aren’t together much, and need a “Club England” so that they can get used to each other and develop understanding. Constant chopping and changing helps no one but the press. And having to fight for your place, all of the time, creates too much pressure and fear - Capello himself has noticed that it’s fear, not lack of lumpen “passion”, that’s holding England back. There are a small number of English players who possess international quality and the ability to handle that pressure, but not enough to fill an XI, let alone a squad. There are more, of the type historically exemplified by a remarkable man named Geoff Thomas, who have the mental strength but not the actual ability. Once Rooney, Owen, Hargreaves, Crouch (ball to feet, please), Bentley and Beckham are in the squad, the remainder have to come from the skilful-but-less-assured group. (The only defender I’d put in that list is Gary Neville, who has spent his entire career on the verge of losing his United place to this or that expensive foreign player, but Neville is quite obviously unfit at the moment).

There’s one more thing. It’s almost certainly not the case, yet the thought crosses my mind. What if Capello is in the job for reasons other than the ones he gives?

It must be obvious to continental observers that our English players depend on technically superior French, Spanish and Portuguese players for much of their club success. And it must be obvious that we in England still don’t realize the extent of our problem. In ten years’ time, all will be well, if Arsene Wenger’s right about the quality of youth moving through the academies. But for now.. what if it’s all a big joke, an exercise to bring us down to size, to confront us, not with what we’ve lost, but with what we’ve never attempted seriously to obtain? What if Capello knows that we’re not good enough, whatever any manager does? What if Capello’s merely marching the players up to the top of the hill and down again in order to provide Beckham with caps and the rest of them with a humiliating experience? What if that’s what it’s all about: the regimented dining, the grown-up clothes, the teamsheet-on-the-bus routine, the unfamiliar formations, the squads with their golf-tournament-style “cut” and unpredictable manning?

It probably isn’t true, and Capello is probably serious about getting us to 2010. But if he is just here to spend his time in some extended, sophisticated, cynical exercise, in making the rosbifs dance to the bullets, then I hope he’s enjoying it. Because I certainly am.

Why British Football Needs To Become More British To Succeed

This man went to the same state school as David Beckham:

Twenty years earlier, and in the north, these men were also products of ordinary backgrounds:

..whereas the man you see here was an autodidact:

I was on my uppers during the last recession, and took comfort in the humble location of this man’s blue plaque:

And this man was born in working class Salford. The Tate owns 25 of his paintings now, and good ones can fetch more than half a million pounds at auction:

Men from a country that boasts 101 Nobel prizes - Germany, with approximately twice our population, muster only 76, France 49. Men from a country that published 206,000 books in 2005, more than the US (172,000), China (100,000) and Germany (71,515).

Britain is a country notorious for originality and eccentricity. We saved the modern world in ‘39-’45, then built it, with the jet engine, the transistor, the first proper computer (or was that another Brit, Babbage’s?), and who knows what else..

More recently, another man who had to fight for his education exemplified just what I’m getting at:

Has there ever been a more beautiful car?

Hell, we even invented football.

Which is why we should be ashamed to read this, from Franco Baldini, after his first few days with the best footballers in the country:

We are trying to play more with the ball because the English culture is after two, three passes to hit a long ball. We have to try to play more. We need more technical skill. We have to practise, practise, practise. Also, many times we think about why some players are so important for their club - not just domestically but in European competition too - but they are less effective for England. What we have to work out is why that is. Maybe with their clubs, they play with less pressure than they play with for England. We know they want to play and perform but it’s a problem we want to address. This week has been very important for us so we can see things at first hand.

Our football, if it were truly British, would be original, clever, thinking (and I don’t mean intellectual. I left academia in ‘91 because I wanted colleagues who could find their way out of a paper bag) and one step ahead. It would be subtle, ironic, but effective. Instead, it’s hackneyed, backward.

Superficially exciting, but as embarrassing in international company as Daphne Moon’s brother.

It’s not a class problem. English rugby is a middle class pursuit, and won a world cup during a brief moment of applied intelligence under Sir Clive Woodward, but it couldn’t get away from all that kind of stuff fast enough once he’d resigned.

Motor sport aside, it’s hard to think of a single major British sport that is ahead of its rivals. Everywhere else, the talk is of doing enough to catch up. There’s no ambition at all to do any overtaking.

Given how popular football is, why doesn’t it enjoy the services of the British eccentric and original (I distinguish these from the “great characters” the media creates from time to time)?

In football’s case, I think it’s all about fear. Fear of the obviously intelligent, fear of those people who can do what you can’t. British sport is a safe haven from the “clever”: a place where you can get into a crowd and laugh at what secretly frightens you, makes you feel inferior.

Even football journalists don’t want to look clever. Instead, so many of them talk in a wierd, obviously-fake laddish version of mockney, a language as far away from working class accents as Bertram Wooster’s but twice as ridiculous. That daft change in register when the news team hands over to the sports correspondent..

There’s Simon Clifford, of course. But whereas all British schools once had Acorn’s BBC Micro in their classrooms, how many British schools have taken his approach to the game on board? It’s even non-contact and non-competitive and there are infant versions, so what’s the problem?

The fact is, British football just isn’t very British. It’s not British to be importing expertise - the brain drain’s supposed to be going the other way. It’s not British to be found gormless and clumping, unless it’s in our attempts to brew lager.

So the British game is fast and exciting.. but Arsenal fans don’t miss playing “British”, and neither would you if your club could perform like that. And even that isn’t how British players and British teams should play.. we should be much better than that. It should be impossible for foreign players to use merit to get into the Premiership, and England and Scotland, at least, have it in them to recover the Edwardian lead over the rest of the world. Not through hubris, but by being like the rest of the country.

It doesn’t have to be la-di-da or fancy dan. Tony Harrison isn’t, but look at this! This is what British is like..

I

Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead
we chew it slowly that last apple pie.

Shocked into sleeplessness you’re scared of bed.
We never could talk much, and now don’t try.

You’re like book ends, the pair of you, she’d say,
Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare…

The ’scholar’ me, you, worn out on poor pay,
only our silence made us seem a pair.

Not as good for staring in, blue gas,
too regular each bud, each yellow spike.

At night you need my company to pass
and she not here to tell us we’re alike!

You’re life’s all shattered into smithereens.

Back in our silences and sullen looks,
for all the Scotch we drink, what’s still between ’s
not the thirty or so years, but books, books, books.

II

The stone’s too full. The wording must be terse.
There’s scarcely room to carve the FLORENCE on it–

Come on, it’s not as if we’re wanting verse.
It’s not as if we’re wanting a whole sonnet!

After tumblers of neat Johnny Walker
(I think that both of us we’re on our third)
you said you’d always been a clumsy talker
and couldn’t find another, shorter word
for ‘beloved’ or for ‘wife’ in the inscription,
but not too clumsy that you can’t still cut:

You’re supposed to be the bright boy at description
and you can’t tell them what the fuck to put!

I’ve got to find the right words on my own.

I’ve got the envelope that he’d been scrawling,
mis-spelt, mawkish, stylistically appalling
but I can’t squeeze more love into their stone.

If only we realized it, we could do to 4-4-2 what Harrison does to that simple ballad form. And then invent new forms, faster and more easily than anyone else. Our popular musicians have. Bowie came from Croydon; Morrisey from Hulme. Harrison himself was a Leeds boy, of course.

Given the state of Arsenal, the reBritishization of football will have to start in the capital. And I have a poster to rally the ranks (click to enlarge):

(copyright cambridge2000.com)

Tout changes a Wembley, next, tout changes a Hackney Marsh, tout changes at the public parks and school pitches and non-league grounds. You can keep your hat on, as they say. But we were being British when we invented this brilliant game, and invented all of the structures that have kept it thriving for so long. Let’s be British in how we play it, once again.

Put Clifford’s methods into primary schools, and in 15 years the world won’t be able to touch our young players. And football will be British again. Because heaven knows what country it resembles now.

AFTERWORD: You’re all going to hate this, aren’t you? But please tell me why - I’d be particularly interested in answers to the question of our national ambition regarding the game, why we don’t seek to be the best, just to keep the rest vaguely in sight, and why it is that our technical skills are still behind fifty-five years after 6-3.

England 2 Switzerland 1

I came in just at the end of the first half: Jenas had given England a lead. Jenas? And, later in the second half, Gareth Barry came off. Barry?

Match of the Day was refusing to tell johnny-come-latelies like myself who was playing, so it took some time to dawn on me that Capello had double-crossed us about his selection yet again. Or, we’d just failed to second-guess him. No Hargreaves, no Young, and Joe Cole appearing both on the wing and in “the hole”.

As for Barry, he had been playing and I’d been watching for a full half hour without my noticing that he was even on the pitch. But that’s good news: that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Under McClaren, the men who came out well from internationals always did so to a dismal backdrop of off-days and poor form and dulled inspiration from their colleagues. Crouch at first, later Gareth Barry or the “veterans at 28″ Owen and Heskey. This time, the players in the spotlight were exactly who you would want them to be: the front men, Rooney, Bentley and Joe Cole. Later, Shaun Wright-Phillips.

They could take the applause because things were working remarkably well behind them. The Swiss goal was a half-chance brilliantly taken; that, and some last-minute nerves from England as the clock ran down, was all they were permitted to have. England’s defence won possession, and - instead of blasting the ball upfield - fed it to Gerrard, or Jenas, who’d take the ball upfield with a series of short passes interspersed with intelligent but simple movement, then hand over to Bentley or Cole. Then the fun would really begin.

England made plenty of chances in the second half. What was so refreshing about these chances is that they weren’t random occurrences, but regular occasions emerging from possession football and the sheer skill and intelligence of the front three. The ball skills, the thinking, the cooperation and the attitude were all there in spades and at times it was lovely to watch. The Swiss responded with violence, upending Bentley time after time when he threatened to rip them into pieces.

It wasn’t champagne football, merely very promising. England still stood off the opposition too much, especially later on, when they should have closed down. And SWP, although good within his lights, clearly doesn’t have Bentley’s passing range or vision.

But for the first time in a long while, there was no doubt whatsoever that England knew what they were doing. The best moments under McClaren came as a result of accident: enforced selections of Barry, of Heskey. This, by contrast, looked planned and practiced, and one reflects that it was planned and practiced in only 2-3 days. Both goals, Jenas’s tap-in and then SWP’s, topped off patient, excellent play.

What highlights and online clips will conceal is England’s new reluctance to resort to the long ball. Crouch came on and was employed as a striker whose ability demanded, and got, the pass along the floor. But for excellent keeping, Crouch and Bentley would have reprised the Croatia goal.

But if you missed the game, and rely on clips and best-ofs, watch the play, but then look at the expressions on the faces of the players. That scared gormlessness, that muted little-boy-lost look, is gone. They look awake, secure, resolute even.

Towards the end, England decided to pass the ball around for its own sake, Leeds-Southampton style. Each successful pass - I didn’t count how many - was greeted with huge cheers from a large, contented Wembley crowd.

It’s easy to run away with expectations when England put in one good performance. But this was not just a good performance. It was a clever one. Not a fluke, not the consequence of an Owen or a Rooney on a blue streak. Our international side has adopted Dan Dennett’s “intentional stance.”. My summary: England kept possession well. And that means game on.

This is going to be good.

What We Learn From Capello’s “First Eleven”

This is more like it - a team so utterly unlike the one I’d hazarded as to make the Switzerland game the most interesting and exciting since Sven’s debut against Spain. That is, of course, if the Beeb have read the runes correctly.

David James; Wes Brown, Rio Ferdinand, Matthew Upson, Ashley Cole; David Bentley, Stephen Gerrard (c), Owen Hargreaves, Ashley Young; Joe Cole, Wayne Rooney.

There are surprises everywhere. David James cracks open the coffin lid on his career yet again, and is now in danger of becoming a significant keeper in the history of the national side. No one dreamed of Upson and Brown in defence, nor of Joe Cole in the hole, nor of both Young and Bentley getting starts.

I’d half expected Capello to come up with a “real bastard of a team” as Don Revie put it, one designed to go a long period undefeated at least until confidence built up. But this is a beauty of a side, full of speed and skill.

So the good news is in: Capello trusts in skill and technique over the good old English virtues. In this side, Gerrard and Hargreaves are reduced to the status of cloggers. Neither Young nor Bentley are of a mind just to bang in mindless crosses a la Lennon or Downing, and we can look forward to exciting cut-ins and the ball arriving to English feet for a change.

And Capello’s self-confidence comes across loud and clear. It’s a new formation, and a clear tactical departure from the McClaren days. Capello clearly believes that he can get his men playing this way this quickly. And behind the novelty is a refreshing simplicity. All Gerrard and Hargreaves have to do, really, is protect the defence and give the ball to Cole, Bentley or Young and let them get on with it. I hope Capello has it in mind to give Michael Owen a shot at playing in front of this midfield, because he must be salivating at the prospect.

There’s little sign of Capello’s recently-vaunted defensive streak. This is an attacking side: he’s clearly seen enough in this group of players to feel ready to take the game to Switzerland. I hope this is a sign of things to come.

So many of the old England questions are answered in this team. There’s no left-sided problem. There’s no no-Beckham problem. And although one wonders how close Brown would have been to the side were a fit Gary Neville available, I don’t think John Terry is going to be missed - and I suspect the Chelsea captain has a bigger problem on his hands than merely hanging on to the armband. There’s creativity in the middle, with Joe Cole, for the first time since Gascoigne was forcibly retired, and Gascoigne never enjoyed having a Rooney to provide for.

It’s the first England line-up for a decade that can have Owen on the bench and not look fatally weakened. And I’m not forgetting Crouch. Should he come on in front of this midfield, he’ll have passes to his feet for the first time since he came onto the international team. We’ll finally see him at his best. So long as Gerrard can be persuaded not to bang high balls at him in the boneheaded manner we saw against Croatia and so frustratingly against Portugal in 2006.

I doubt Gerrard is quite the communicator that Capello’s made him out to be, but given that my Hargreaves-for-skipper was fantasy, I find it hard not to wish him luck.

I’m revising my scoreline - upwards. With a fair wind behind them, this lot could put away four or five.

Capello Kremlinology

UPDATE: Gerrard is captain, and the team will know who they are at some time tomorrow. I could have done without this particular choice of words from Capello:

Gerrard is important because he can pass on things, transmit things and inspire the players.

A kind of dread takes hold…

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

With England due to play tomorrow, there’s plenty of speculation abroad about Fabio Capello’s first actual starting eleven. What’s keeping it going is simple. Capello is telling us absolutely nothing about his intentions, his methods, his thoughts.. anything.

So we guess into the gaps. So far, we have the following:

1. You’ll get picked if you’re playing regularly and are not entirely out of form
2. There aren’t enough decent English players for squad selection to be entirely a matter of form, and we aren’t sure that’s Capello’s idea in any case
3. England are going to start with defence, and Capello doesn’t think it’s good enough as it stands
4. He thinks captaincy is extremely important, and is willing to delay the appointment. We don’t know what kind of captain he wants - the lead-by-example Beckham model, the pointless-yelling Terry model, the useful-yelling Adams model, or the glory-boy Gerrard model. It’ll be a shame if it’s the Adams model, as there are no consistently-fit candidates of the required quality..

Now that reports of the first training session are in, we can add some less solidly established points.

For instance, at first sight he seems to have no truck with the idea that the wealth and fame of players kills the idea of the sergeant-major manager. Because there he stands, high and loud in his diadoras and England top, shouting instructions and using surnames.

But that’s just how he runs a training session. We know nothing at all about how he’ll manage team expectations, issues of form and problems from home, rivalry within the squad and cliques. We know he doesn’t believe in being pals with the players, but that’s a feature of every top manager. Ferguson is famous both for teacups at dawn and knowing how to handle players so that they are free to perform. The old fashioned sergeant major wouldn’t have helped Cantona through the injustice the player suffered after worthily demolishing that Palace chav, nor would he have rescued Beckham and Ronaldo from their World Cup nightmares. Capello might work his training with complete authority, but neckless rosbifs looking for a bully are going to be disappointed.

We don’t know how he’s going to handle the press, although you can be sure that he knows what he’s in for. Thus far, his press conferences have been a matter of him patiently talking down to the English journalists: the tone is that of a genial dog trainer who has a bullwhip hidden beneath the desk. I doubt he’ll ever tell them what’s really on his mind, principally because he believes it’s more than they’re capable of taking on board. Unfair on some - Barnes, Winter, Samuels (who has a nice new line in “English football is thick”: I wonder if he’s a lurker here?) and Jim White. Less so on the rest.

Nor do we know why he’s really here. I don’t know: it strikes me that a decent African team are the best bet for a top manager seeking to make history. It’s not money. But although I’m glad he’s here, his describing England managership as “a beautiful job” is worryingly delusional unless he has personal capacity beyond even that of the bulletproof Ericksson. Of course, he could simply regard it as the most difficult job, and want it for that reason. Some people are like that.

Nor do we know what he’s going to be able to do for Stuart Pearce. It might make all the difference.

My choice, then, to face Switzerland:

Kirkland; Richards, Ferdinand, Lescott, Ashley Cole, Joe Cole, Owen Hargreaves (cap), Gareth Barry, David Bentley, Owen, Crouch.
I could just as easily exchange Gerrard for Hargreaves or Barry, and have Rooney in place of Crouch, but personal animus and bias have to come in somewhere where Gerrard is concerned, and I still prefer Owen to Rooney, at least until he’s past 49 goals).

Your thoughts and your teams, please. And your predictions for a scoreline: I’m going for 0-0.

Defoe’s Late Call-Up

This is interesting: I had serious doubts about Defoe’s England future on the grounds of his temperament and the quality of his off-the-ball movement, but the injury to Gabby Agbonlahor has let him back in despite his absence from the original 30.

On the face of it, what this reveals about Capello’s management style is outstandingly simple: be playing, and be playing well, and you can hope to get into the squad at any time.

..the Italian coach told Defoe last night that, having moved to Portsmouth and scored on debut on Saturday, he has a role to play.. (Guardian)

So this isn’t going to be a Club England approach with the same or similar eleven given a long time to become accustomed to playing together. Or if it is, it’s going to be one run on very different lines.

I see this doing two things.

First of all, clearly, it’s going to ramp up the pressure on England’s potential internationals. Not just during international matches, either; they’ll have to perform all season long to remain in contention. Although this will please the kind of fan who quietly hates players for their money and fame and who regards slave plantations with whip-toting overseers as the ideal form of management, it isn’t necessarily going to produce better performances - just more anxiety. Fear, not laziness, is the problem.

Secondly, it places pressure on the coach. Capello had better know what he is doing and be capable of presenting that to the players in a way they can understand. If the players can’t rely on their places, less emphasis falls on their experience of playing together and more on what they are instructed to do game by game. Effectively, Capello, who has not managed an international side before, is intentionally widening the gap between that kind of management and club management in which you can develop a team over time.

There’s one point to be made to temper the slave-plantation boys. Gabby’s injury means that the 23 to face Switzerland are all players that Ericksson and McClaren capped. McClaren’s experiments, the successful introduction of Gareth Barry aside, only confirmed that Ericksson had got the basic side right. Beyond that, you needed the best players to be fit - and how often has that been the case in the last four years? because their understudies just aren’t good enough. Capello clearly agrees on the basic group. It is not on, as some of the plantation chaps have urged, to “drop them all” because they’ve “brought shame on the nation.”

Over the last three years, it’s always been the ones the plantation boys think are past it, or prima donnas, or not roaring lions or whatever phrase gets used, who have performed.

Exhibit One:

Exhibit Two:

Exhibit Three:

By the way, is anyone NOT taking at least some enjoyment from Capello’s treatment of John Terry, in the light of all those chavscum nightclub incidents?

Fabio Capello’s First Squad

When Sven Goran Ericksson put out his first squad back in 2001, it sprang surprises, not least for Charlton’s Chris Powell. Powell was an effective left-back for England until Ashley Cole was ready (at the time, he was another surprise - too young, too inexperienced, it was thought by many). There are none in Capello’s first essay, just confirmation of dolour for Beckham and Robinson.

Beckham’s the victim of the US football season being out of sync with our own. Robinson, on the other hand, may be watching his entire career unravel. There have been comments made this year by former England keepers about the attitude of the new generation to training, learning and development - not complimentary ones, and although these comments haven’t been levelled at Robinson personally, nevertheless they give plenty of food for thought.

Robert Green can clearly forget all about England now, failing the absolute demise of every other English keeper. His omission, Beckham’s and Robinson’s aside, is Capello’s main departure from the Ericksson template. Otherwise, it’s clear that Capello’s brief time in England has led him to agree with the Swede: there really is only this core group of players who are up to international level, plus twenty or so hangers-on to this tasting menu of a squad.

Likewise Jermaine Defoe. It’s temperament with him - he combines his individual standoffishness with a reluctance to work on his game, with the result that his runs and positioning are no better now than they were when he was a teenage prodigy at West Ham.

I’m not surprised by Curtis Davies’s inclusion. His famous “pub footballer” interview, combined with some good recent performances, mark him out as someone with the right attitude to go with his talent. If he keeps this up, a long international career could await him. And, given the sheer number of Aston Villa selections, perhaps domestic trophies to boot. Martin O’Neill is building quietly, but it’s bearing fruit.

And it’s good to have Capello mention Walcott, Hart, Wheater and Lennon by name. Walcott and Lennon are on the verge of becoming for real what they have promised to be since 2006 - truly exciting, exceptional players, but both need a bit of luck at the moment. The boost of being singled out for mention will help them. Wheater surely won’t be out of the full squad for long, and there are rumoured to be others to follow from the excellent Middlesbrough youth set-up.

I saw Hart play against Sheffield United, and, comic disaster with balloons aside, he looks like a proper keeper. There’s a presence about him that wasn’t so evident with Robinson and Green. It’ll be interesting to see who of Kirkland, Carson and James get the nod against Switzerland.

Overall it’s a defensive squad, with more out-and-out defenders compared to midfielders than we saw under McClaren. Hargreaves or Barry will fight it out for the defensive midfield role, presumably behind Gerrard who looks as if he’ll pick up the armband in the absence of John Terry, unless Alex Ferguson’s proffering of Rio Ferdinand comes through.

There was talk of Michael Owen joining Beckham on the sidelines, but in the end, common sense won out. The doubts expressed about Owen mystify me: when he returned to the colours last year, it was to bring yet more goals. No other England forward does that so reliably.

It looks bad for Dean Ashton, though, who must - like Robert Green - be wondering what he has to do, what fates he has offended. But for injury, he’d have gone to the 2006 World Cup instead of either Walcott or Crouch. McClaren was on the verge of picking him, when injury came again. At one stage in 2005-6, he looked like a younger, more skilful version of Alan Shearer, an old style English centre forward but with subtlety.

Likewise Andy Johnson and Darren Bent. Neither has done anything since 2006 to contradict Ericksson’s judgement of them as, essentially, journeymen. Bent is injured at present, after having come so close to scoring against Croatia, but given what’s happened to Defoe, it will be interesting to see if he is picked when fit. England’s over for Johnson, the Kevin Phillips de nos jours.

Anyway, what do you think? Good squad, bad squad, meaningless? Who are the missing men? Do we learn anything significant about Capello’s ideas for England, or does that await the first of his actual elevens? Is Sol Campbell’s back injury the only reason for his absence, or is his England career over too?

The Problems Facing Fabio Capello

My own pleasure at the appointment of Fabio Capello to the England manager’s post is largely down to non-footballing reasons. In England, there’s a sense that football is an acceptable interest for men, but more cultural pasttimes are suspect. Not so for the gastronome aesthete Capello.

That’s not to argue that hinterland makes a manager. High intelligence does, as the careers of Busby, Stein, “Clough and Taylor” and Alex Ferguson demonstrate. But you don’t have to collect art or wine. That Capello does both is merely a refreshing change. It’s not one the British press are likely to understand or appreciate: it already has them looking over their shoulders at one another, giggling in that nervous, insecure way of boys in the crowd everywhere.

Nevertheless, if there is one thing I’d like Capello to do whilst he’s here, it’s to place football in its rightful place in our culture. Something so beautiful and thrilling does not deserve to be the strictly-guarded preserve of a more than averagely paranoid and insular wing of national life. But he won’t be here long enough. He’ll have to satisfy himself with winning.

It’s hard to tell whether there’s more or less opposition this time to the appointment of a foreign manager. As in 2000, there is general recognition that there’s no one of the required calibre here at the moment. There’s a reason for that: nothing is being done to create a cadre of top-level coaches. The pointless UEFA badges aside, there is no place of training for football management in the United Kingdom. Nor is there any especial call for one. I would like to see a member of the FA Executive urge a programme to create - not coaches to compete with the Europeans - but coaches far better than any in the world, coaches that foreign clubs and countries will compete for as they competed for the likes of Fred Pentland and Jimmy Hogan at the turn of the last century. Coaches with the creativity, imagination and management skills we see in other areas of British life. A Briton, Jonathan Ive, designed both the IMac and the IPod; we need to create the Ives of the football world and establish for ourselves an enduring lead over our rivals.

There is the usual talk about an English manager understanding the unique mentality of the English player. There is no evidence at all that anything of the sort is true - if the idea has any internal logic to it at all. It’s not an issue applied to any other part of British sporting life. Do British swimmers have a unique mentality? Or British rugby league players? Or British tennis players? Of course not: it’s just the thrashing about of an insular, paranoid outlook that has been outflanked by events year after year.

Nor should Capello’s appointment give English managers the idea that they cannot aspire to the top job. Because the real reason that they shouldn’t aspire to the top job is that they lack the ideas, the talent, the originality, the training and the courage. There are no English candidates coming through the ranks who look likely to change that. I almost wrote here, ‘where are our Steins, Busbys, Shanklys..’ before realising that I’d be listing a series of Scots. Yes, the Middleborough duo of Revie and “Clough-and-Taylor” might line up alongside Sir Bobby Robson and Joe Mercer as very good managers, but none of them are a Stein. This is an older problem than we give credit for.

Capello himself seems to be of the thinking that the English players have a mental block about the national side, which would explain their failure to reproduce their club form for England. If he’s right, then it’s a relatively straightforward problem to solve. But I don’t think that’s the whole of his thinking on the subject. It’s just a soundbite. This is just as well, as the idea doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny.

Which players, then, are failing to reproduce their club form for England? Not Micah Richards, or Ashley Cole, or David Beckham, or Michael Owen, or, recently, Wayne Rooney. Not Rio Ferdinand. Not Gareth Barry or Owen Hargreaves or Peter Crouch. Is Gerrard failing, or is what we see merely what Gerrard is when deprived of his Spanish midfield colleagues? Lampard might be: I suspect him, and others of his generation, of harbouring secret doubts as to the true extent of their ability. Is John Terry failing, or is he just a limited player unfortunate enough to be the object of tabloid fantasy, who want a British bulldog carrying the soul of a Churchill and get instead an unremarkable nightclub boy from the beerier end of the pedestrianized south-east?

I can’t help feeling that this generation of players is suffering from a lack of vision, not a lack of form. The group has been together for quite a long time. It is now six years and more since England destroyed Germany in Munich, and yet of that team Owen, Heskey, Gerrard, Ashley Cole, Gary Neville, David Beckham, Owen Hargreaves and Sol Campbell have featured within the last twelve months. Jamie Carragher and Paul Scholes both played; both are supposed to be Capello targets.

That team saw the 2002 World Cup as perhaps a little early for them - but pencilled-in Euro 2004 as the tournament to attack. But Rooney was injured at the crucial moment, and the 2006 World Cup - which could have been merely the next opportunity to succeed - became at once both the team’s last chance to rescue themselves from their history and a nightmare arena in which the team would finally come apart.

With 2004 gone, and 2006 gone, and English football culture hiding itself behind a tattered passion-and-commitment screen, qualification for 2008 was just more punishment. Capello needs to bring an idea of what the England team is for, what its story is going to be. When Brian Clough signed Dave Mackay for Derby in the late 1960s, he did it by changing Mackay’s view of the future. Capello needs to do the same for England.

Will he do it with the same 2001-7 squad? England’s best recent performances only served to confirm Ericksson’s initial good judgement. Play Beckham; play Owen with a foil. If Scholes won’t play, Lampard plus Gerrard is about as good as you’re going to get. Defoe, Bent and co. fall short.

I wonder what Ericksson would do now?

At any rate, surely Capello can’t be as unfortunate as Ericksson with injuries. 2002: Gerrard, Neville, Beckham, Owen. 2004: Beckham again, Owen again, Rooney. 2006: Beckham again, Owen again, Rooney again, Neville again, Ashton.

My suspicion is that Capello is going to start out creating what Revie called “a right bastard” of a side. A Wimbledon with polish, that will go out confident of avoiding defeat and taking satisfaction in creating discomfort and distress in more cultured opponents. We are going to bite legs for about eighteen months, and then we’re going to plug in Rooney and Walcott and start scoring goals.

Let’s see if I’m right. And, isn’t it nice not to know what’s about to happen with England? It’s been a long time..

A First, Brief Look at Capello

From today’s Graun:

The young centre-half listened to Mozart and Bach. He also adored jazz, particularly Ella Fitzgerald. He developed a love for the painting of Giorgio De Chirico, founder of the metaphysical school. He liked films too, arthouse movies by the likes of Visconti and Fellini.

His interest in modern art endures. He has an extensive collection and particularly likes Mondrian and Klee. And he continues to love what he terms “good music”. Whenever he can, he goes to La Scala.

Away from the stadium, Capello is a good conversationalist - particularly at table, for England’s new coach is a gourmet. Unlike many Italians, he is also an adventurous eater, relishing Indian, Arab and Japanese cuisine. He appreciates fine wines and had built up an extensive cellar. But it was ruined by his repeated moves from one club, and city, to the next.

For Capello, travel is not a necessity, but a hobby. “I’ve had it in my blood,” he once told me. “I’ve always loved travelling, even since I was a boy.”

He and his wife, Laura, choose their destinations after much thought, and are particularly interested in places where the world’s civilisations began. When they go to Mexico or Peru, it is because of the Mayas or the Incas. If they go to Sicily, it is on the track of the classical Greeks.

Last summer he was in Tibet where he was fascinated by the profound silence of the mountains.

I don’t know quite how it’s happened, ladies and gentlemen, but we have a “More Than Mind Games” manager. What can the interviews have been like? He must have run rings, Brooking aside.

Have you noticed the way most of the journalism thus far is STILL - after everything - blindly salivating at a fantasy vision of fantasy primadonnas getting their fantasy behinds kicked? What strange, strange people some journalists must be. How do they bring up their children?

It’s going to be interesting. And, as I say, I think we’ve won this one.