In the past 30 years, England’s national team has suffered a lot of disappointments. The country that failed to qualify for Euro 2008 also failed to qualify for the 1974, 1978 and 1994 World Cups. Then, of course, there were the horrible performances
in the 1988, 1992 and 2000 European Championships. The list goes on and on.
The debate about why England has failed to succeed on the world and European stage is complex. Ask the pundits in England why their national team has suffered, and you’ll get a long list of contradictory explanations.
Now with Fabio Capello in charge, we’ll see for once and for all whether England is actually a world power in football or not. What Capello brings to the national set-up is an ability to wipe the slate clean and play the best system that will be necessary to turn England into a winning nation.
If Capello is unable to turn England into a force in football, then we’ll know whether England’s reign as a leader in football is over or not.
In the past, there have been too many distractions and excuses. England, I feel, have been held back in the past by poor managers such as Steve McClaren and Kevin Keegan.
At the heart of the national squad is a team filled with talented individual players. What the side has lacked is a manager who is able to fuse the team together and play a formation and strategy that’s capable of winning the massive games.
What Capello brings to England is transparency. An ability to see right through the England team and finally judge them for what they are. Time will tell, but we’ll get to see within six months whether they’re great pretenders now in decline, or a nation of talented players that have been held back by inferior coaches.
Great article gaffer until the last paragraph. All we have for England the next six months are friendlies. I thought Bruce Arena was a great coach based on the friendlies in 1999 only to find out in 2000 he had no clue how to prepare a team for a road qualifier. Friendlies don’t tell you anything although considering England takes them as if they are competitive matches which is part of their problem, maybe we will know.
Friendlies can be meaningless except that Capello tends to treat friendlies as life-and-death matters as well. The guy doesn’t like to lose a match no matter what. I think what the article was getting at it is that hopefully he’ll pick the best players available for the style he wants to play and not just load the team up with the top names as has been the case in the past. I hope for England’s sake that Becks is given his 100th cap and then only selected for future callups on merit not reputation. Capello needs to bring through some of the younger players, like Bentley and Agbonlahor, who are performing well at the top levels.