The post mortem rumbles on

The England team arrived back in London on Tuesday morning and a glance at the papers will see the post mortem is well and truly on. Whether it be opinions on what went wrong, who should lead the country or who should be the future of the national team, it is all there. The Daily Telegraph’s Kevin Garside feels the time has come to wield the axe and for pride to be restored to the nation’s game.

If new thinking is required, how about restoring pride and honour in the England shirt by asking those who wear it to do so for nothing? And those who coach the team to demonstrate their desire for the post by accepting terms commensurate with results?

The Capello model is bust. We can no longer tolerate the days of big salaries for zilch results. Just like the parliamentarians with noses too long in the trough, the pampered England footballer has exhausted our patience. We want a return on the emotional tax we pay.
The FA has a duty to recognise the failings of Capello’s reign and send him back to his art collection and mud baths in Ischia.

The new regime should be headed by a vibrant coach willing to end some big careers and promote the best of English youth. And don’t ask who those players might be. It doesn’t matter. They cannot be any worse.

Capello should return his salary for his part in the featureless displays churned out by the Premier League all stars, not hang about for two weeks waiting for the FA to decide his fate.
The £10 million annual wage bill wasted on Capello and his cohorts is an insult to every England fan that made the trip to Bloemfontein and the millions at home that make an emotional investment in a team that appears not to care.

Capello’s England team could not summon the effort to fight back, to try a lick. Running is what they do, isn’t it? Desire is the minimum requirement.

Maybe this £100k a week generation cannot get up for the England gig anymore. The England experience has been demoted in the priorities of the modern international footballer, whose professional responsibility is to the club that bankrolls his Hollywood lifestyle with £5m a year wages.

For the Wayne Rooneys, Frank Lampards and John Terrys of this precinct the Champions League is where the big international challenge is, playing for teams that are arguably superior to the national side. Emile Heskey would not get in Manchester United’s reserves.

England is a step down in quality and intensity. The players would never admit it. The idea that they are not proud to represent their country is anathema to them.

But actions speak louder than words. They cannot escape the depressing evidence scattered about the playing fields of South Africa like elephant droppings.

Rooney, Lampard, Terry, Steven Gerrard; none of them was able to replicate the power and ambition of his club football. Capello said fear was the key. Philip Lahm is nearer the mark. Conceit, he said, arrogance borne of inflated egos was behind the buttery collapse in Bloemfontein.

When the questions were asked, England could not fathom a response. Sorry, but it looks to this observer like the players do not care enough about the shirt.

If that is the case let the England project be what it is for Germany, a vehicle for talented youth, hungry for the exposure, keen to make an impact, to chop down some big trees. And let them be led by a coach that understands their needs, treats them like adults, and is not cowed by the challenge.

Capello utterly misunderstood the tournament environment and misread the requirement in South Africa. England were over prepared and underwhelmed.

By insisting on a boot camp mentality, by disappearing into the Austrian Alps for ten days before departure and isolating his team in the remote, rural north of the country here, Capello effectively disconnected England from the event unfolding around them.

Time for an Englishman

With the pressure firmly on Don Fabio, the Daily Mail's Jeff Powell feels the time has come for England to be managed by an Englishman.

Never in my scariest nightmares did I imagine that anyone could be worse than Sven Goran Eriksson.

The clearest sign that Fabio was morphing into Sven Mark II came when he tried to cash-in with his grubby plan to publish a commercial index of his team’s performances in South Africa.

How much was he earning? The alarm bells should have been sounding louder than those vuvuzelas. Not at the FA.

When Don Fabio cunningly suggested they scratch out the escape clause in his contract — a clause which enabled either side to walk away without penalty if it all went turnip shaped in South Africa — they leapt like salmon to the treacherous bait.

What I read into that was Capello already suspected he might be heading for a disaster and he was banking two years’ compensation in advance.

Now the evidence: when asked if he would resign, he said ‘no’.

Not, he should have added, with another £12 million to come for being sacked. And if the FA think they will soon be able to stop paying by installment when he takes up another position, they should remember he was in virtual retirement when he said that England would be his last job.

First Sven, now Fabio. The millions squandered on these two imposters should have gone into the teaching of football at the grass roots.

The overall standard of football coaching in this country is lamentable.

While England were clinging to enough rabbits’ feet to spark an anti-hunt protest, Germany manager Joachim Low was doing a proper job, planning to exploit a defence not only as wide open as the proverbial barn door but hung on Terry’s rusty hinges.

So much for our latest Eurocrat. Has no one ever told the FA that no team has ever won the World Cup with a foreign manager?

Nor will one any time soon. So the earlier someone puts in a call to Flash ’Arry, Roy of the Rovers or even Big Sam, the better.