05 July 2010 – Day 25
Any World Cup or indeed major international championship is a strange time for the coach or manager of the participating teams. Some are brought in just for that competition, others resign as soon as their team is knocked out, some wait for their football federation or associations to sack them. We’ve seen coaches who hold their hand up and accept the blame for their teams exit, some who hide behind other “factors” to explain their teams demise. As in life some men are more honourable than others.
When England were knocked out there was the usual outcry in the media and amongst the public about whether Mr Capello should stay or go. What we got was a rather curious situation. Mr “my players is tired” Capello said he wanted to meet with the FA to ensure he had the backing of the ruling body. In return he got a, “you’ll have to wait two weeks” for the FA decision. Now I was never great at maths, but when I went to school, two weeks was 14 days, I’ll even be cocky and say 10 days for a working week. So after 4 days we get the FA saying, don’t panic, Fabio you are the best man for the job, carry on till 2012. Did this have anything to do with Hodgson moving to take the Liverpool job? Now as each day passes, polite noises about how Mr Capello is the right man continue to trickle out from administrators, journalists and players.
So given the situation, what happens next? England have a friendly against Hungary at Wembley on 11th August. The FA in their wisdom have set prices at a sensible level (£40 top price) and every effort should be made to get a good crowd in for that game. My view is that is should be billed as “England: A new start” or “England: the next generation”. The FA should be up front and say that it is to be an experimental side and will be through the 2012 European Championship Qualifying campaign. The media and the public then have to be patient, however big an ask that is. I would exclude from selection any of the players who actually started in the World Cup. A young squad should be selected so that the crowd has nobody to get on the back of in terms of association with the doomed South African campaign. It is drastic and some would say simplistic, but can it be any worse than what we suffered in June 2010?