In a departure from this blog’s normal focus of arena, perhaps to show I am not only a political geek, I will devote this weeks post to a subject while not political in nature has dominated the news over the last couple of weeks following England’s exit from the World Cup.
The FA in a typical wait-and-see rather than decisive action have belatedly decided that the grossly over paid England manager Fabio Capello shall remain in his post despite England’s under whelming performance at the World Cup. Many football fans I have spoken to have found this a disappointing decision. They wanted Capello to take responsibility for what was a disastrous campaign. However, I think this analysis misses the point. Is Capello the reason for the poor performance of England at the World Cup? The answer is that he is probably partly responsible and as manager it is difficult to see how he in not in part some way culpable. However, the crucial question is to what extent? Let us not forget Capello has one of the best managerial records in the game and the media has been telling us for the last couple of years that he is the man who has master-minded England’s rejuvenation in qualifying for the World Cup including two impressive wins over Croatia. To use a favorite football phrase – you do not become a bad manager over night. Before Capello, we had McLaren. While, he did not have the glittering managerial CV that Capello has, he has since gone on to win the league in the Netherlands. Before that we had Eriksson, another who’s managerial CV is the envy of most top flight managers. All have been and gone, taking the buck for under performance. But what is the common denominator here? Surely, it is the players not the managers.
It is difficult to pin point exactly the reason for such under performance from England. As mentioned, Capello is to blame to some extent, but to a greater extent, it must be other reasons, perhaps England’s innate style of play which continually gets found wanting at internationally level, perhaps player fatigue, perhaps hyper-pressure (as was so apparent by the stage fright performance against Algeria), perhaps it will remain a mystery why this current crop of players, a so called ‘golden generation’ has under performed. At least at the next World Cup, when most of these set would have retired, we can stop wondering why they do not achieve the sum of their parts. And yet it is that mystery which provides for such wonder which must be investigated if we are to ever to learn the lessons of failure. Any such lessons would have been swept under the carpet if the FA had chosen to sack Capello.
A successful businessman and keen football fan argued to me the other evening that he has to hit certain targets in his job and if missed them by a long way then he would have to resign and if he would not resign then he would face the sack anyway. On this basis Capello must go, he continued. This gets to the heart of the problem in football and the mistakes that the FA have made through recent decades. Football cannot be fairly compared to the business world and yet in a way this analysis is absolutely correct. Of course, football is a business in many respects, but in many others it is not a business. Football’s forgetfulness of this most imperative principle has lead to much of its ruin over recent years. Ironically, rather than any other reason, this is why I think Capello should have been sacked. The FA took Capello on, in fantasy- based business terms. He was paid an incredibly inflated salary in the aftermath of the McLaren embarrassment. (No other salary in international management comes anywhere close to that of Capello’s). The FA thought that Capello would buy them success. Capello should have been sacked to prove the fallacy that football is a business and success can be brought effortlessly with simply a big contract.
Why was he not sacked? The real reason is because someone had released a break clause in his contract before the World Cup meaning to sack him now would cost a fortune which the FA did not have. The FA, continue in their long line of form of derogation of duty to protect the game (the two towers of which are their 1983 decision to allow Tottenham Hotspur to float on the stock exchange and their 1992 decision to allow the creation of the Premiership), which confirms that disappointment for England fans will continue for some time to come yet. Politics to return next week…
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