bridge views - the thinking fan's chelsea blog

No silver bullet for England, but here's how the FA should spend Capello wages

If the reign of Fabio Capello has taught us anything, it surely must be that hiring an expensive foreign ‘master tactician’ is no silver bullet for success.

Not that Capello has proved himself the ‘Professor of Football’ that many proclaimed him to be. During the World Cup qualifying campaign he proved himself a sensible manager, ready and willing to make rational decisions and follow through with them. Players were picked on form and fitness, a system was picked and, when successful, stuck with.

Come the eve of the World Cup proper however, the ‘sensible’ Capello went out the window and in its place England were rewarded with a desperate manager whose judgement had left him. Odd calls to Scholes and Carragher sent a message to squad members that the Italian had no faith in them, and the Capello index farce seemed entirely out of character. In places his squad selection beggared belief.

Worse still, he showed displayed no tactical acumen once the competition actually started. Who can explain him needlessly playing Lampard and Gerrard out of position throughout the tournament, ANY of his substitutions or why Wright-Phillips was twice given run-outs ahead of Joe Cole? Can any England fan pinpoint a time when Capello managed to successfully change the shape or style of an England performance during any of the four matches, or when he even tried to? For me, the like-for-like substitution of Defoe for Heskey towards the end of the Germany match was Capello’s lack of imagination and bravery as a World Cup manager in microcosm.

And then there was the Terry scandal. For all those for whom Terry is evil personified, Capello made no mistake. But for everyone else, the Italian’s hanging of the former captain out to dry only intensified any potential splits in the squad and emphasised his dictatorial grip on the team. In the modern age, fewer and fewer coaches manage in Capello’s distanced fashion, and a more hands-on, inclusive approach is normally the way forward.

Players, of course, should take their share of the blame too. But the nub of my argument is this: that managers you think are geniuses are often fallible, and a foreign coach in glasses that comes with a hefty price tag doesn’t necessarily present a better option than others closer to home.

And this is where, for me, the FA have got it all wrong. They assume that the team is good, and therefore hiring the best manager will help it progress. I’m a big believer in the finest managers being able to work wonders (look at Hiddink and Mourinho for recent Chelsea examples of just this), but those managers are few and far between. But generally playing big money – around £6m a year - for an international manager where the requirements are different from club level is a poor investment when you look a the wider problems with English football.

Yes, it’s just my thinking and not based on research or experience, but the better option is surely this. Find a competent English manager who will do the simple things that are needed at international level (ie. play players in their positions and make them feel good about themselves) and not cost the earth – say £2m a year.

That’s £4m extra in the FA coffers. Imagine using that £4m to scour the country and the world for the finest youth coaches there are available, and paying them £40k a year to develop English youngsters up and through the ranks. That’s 100 new coaches funded through just one alternative hire.

Finding new ways to get the best coaches working with young players is the closest thing there is to a silver bullet, and actually it’s where England are most lacking. An article in the Guardian this morning suggested just how far England have fallen behind: while the country has produced a measly 2,769 coaches holding UEFA’s top coaching qualifications, Germany (after much soul searching after failures of the national team in 1998 and 2000) has produced over 12 times as many – 34,970. For the record, France has 17,588, Spain has 23,995 and Italy has 29,420.

In that context, 160 new coaches isn’t that many, but it would still represent a considerable uplift for England. A better idea though, would be to use the £4m to take existing coaches throughout the country and give them grants to get coaching certificates. Paying for each course up to the top UEFA qualification would cost around £5k (you wouldn’t need to go that far, but just for example) – so the money saved would buy you an absolute minimum of 800 top-trained coaches (and that’s if you were funding each course 100%). In this context, having to pay Capello £12m just to leave the post – because of another classic example of a monumental FA bungle - could be costing England as many as 2,400 newly-qualified coaches.

But I’m sure the FA have thought all this through. And dismissed it beacuse of footballing arguments. Or considerations relating to financial efficiency. Or because there's a better way to start catching up with our continental competitors. Of course they have. Probably…

Media venom for John Terry confirms their bias against Chelsea captain

The media have shamelessly engineered a venomous deconstruction of John Terry over the last 24 hours, twisting his words in yesterday’s press conference to concoct stories of revenge and rebellion. In all likelihood, neither of those two words – more often found in Hollywood movie scripts than in football squads (aside from where the French are concerned, obviously) – can really apply to what’s gone on with England since the dismal showing against Algeria.

Admittedly, John Terry’s choice of words during the press conference yesterday morning occasionally hinted at more than a little insensitivity from the former England captain. He might have considered not repeating ‘sod it’ quite so many times for example, and after explaining how he still saw himself as a captain of sorts (for me he is the only one in the team who actually acts like a captain), he could have tacked “but Steven Gerrard is now doing a cracking job with the armband” on for good measure. Appearances are everything – especially when the media, desperate for a story for Monday’s papers, are circling like vultures over a rotting corpse.

But the core of what Terry said was in essence correct and sensible. Breaking the press conference down, he first expressed his and the team’s full backing for Capello, before re-stressing that Friday’s performance wasn’t good enough and that the team must do better.

Later, he talked of the need for the team to air their frustrations, and that if Capello – or anyone else in the team (a part of his quote the media have decided to omit) – doesn’t like it, they’ll have to deal with it. As at Chelsea, he was basically suggesting that it would be healthy for people to be able to get frustrations off their chests. It sounds sensible to me to create an adult culture in the squad that allows players to ask questions and contribute appropriately, while the manager maintains ultimate control. It also sounds sensible to have more frank conversations when things are going badly wrong.

Most importantly for me, what he very clearly wasn’t suggesting was that he or any other member of the team had a right to dictate to the manager how the team should play. Yes, he did say that Joe Cole could make a difference, either from the start or from the bench. Was he suggesting Joe Cole MUST play? No. Is what he said a crime? Of course not. And what was the alternative? To say that Cole couldn’t make a difference? Hardly sensible.

In the immediate aftermath of the interview, commentators on Sky Sports news were very positive about Terry’s conference, describing it as a rallying call and the kind of impassioned demand for improvement that was needed after so much fan dissatisfaction just 36 hours previous. That evening, after the Brazil-Ivory Coast game, BBC pundits Alan Shearer and Emmanuel Adebayor both joined Gary Lineker in universally praising John Terry, entirely backing his view that clear the air talks were needed. There was no suggestion that Terry was acting beyond his role or that he had spoken out of turn.

This morning however, journalists for pretty much all of the broadsheets and tabloids (who, unlike Shearer and Lineker, haven’t taken part in the pressure cooker of any international tournaments as far as I’m aware) painted a very different picture with their headlines. Words like ‘revenge’ against Capello (presumably for taking the captaincy away) were banded around, and despite some balance here and there it was pretty much universally agreed that Terry had launched some kind of coup against the manager, sowing disharmony as other ‘senior’ players distanced themselves from England’s number 6.

Other critics of Terry have reasoned that Terry somehow planned the whole thing by giving the interview, and then going off piste. Of course that theory forgets that all of these conferences, and all media interviews, are carefully marshalled by the FA’s press team. Terry would have been carefully selected above all the other players to deliver that specific press conference, and the press team will have surely rehearsed the majority of his answers. Furthermore, the press officer made no attempt to interrupt Terry at any point.

John Terry is no role model, and I very sincerely wish Chelsea had a captain with a cleaner image who it would be easier for me – or anyone - to respect. As it is however, it seems to me that it is the media who are sowing (or trying to sow) disharmony in the team, not Terry, working together to agree the angle they would pursue in this morning’s papers. After all, they had alternative ways of interpreting the press conference. After a strongly worded press interview, John Terry is being pilloried far more than Rooney was for insulting England’s long-suffering travelling support.

Some of Terry’s words were ill-advised, of course. But the punishment doesn’t match the crime: and it might only be England that suffer.

One Italian in England: Ancelotti lays into surly Capello

 Last week a series of quotes from the new Chelsea manager’s autobiography about his negotiations with the Abramovich hit the headlines – you can read what I thought about them here.

 

This morning – quite conveniently timed ahead of England’s World Cup qualifier tomorrow – more quotes from his autobiography have been plastered all over the back pages, this time about England Manager and compatriot Fabio Capello. A choice excerpt:

 

"Capello read games brilliantly that was his best quality. From that point of view, hats off to him. On a human level…he was surly, he didn't have a dialogue with the players, above all he didn't like to talk to us about technical issues. The discussion on certain questions was not relevant to him - it didn't exist."

 

An article on the Guardian website – published a week ago today, I might add - takes his quotes further, adding:

 

“Unsurprisingly, he fell out with many players. For example, I remember Ruud Gullit pinning him up against the wall”.

 

Nice one, Ruud. From a Chelsea fan’s point of view, it’s interesting that Ancelotti once again talks up the importance of man-management and ‘getting on’ with players – he spoke on Chelsea TV about the importance of creating a ‘group’. Turning back to the story though: the media love to stoke up a rivalry as it sells papers. But one thing looks certain: Ancelotti will be a bit more outspoken than we thought…