It's Harry's game as Capello era ends

As the dust clears from the impact of the news that Fabio Capello had called it a day with/been fired by England, the Football Association have a minor headache to deal with in their search for a replacement.

Harry Redknapp has had his name on the job for some time, at least since Tottenham Hotspur's dazzling display in last year's Champions League convinced the doubters he could cut it in international football. But what will Spurs chairman Daniel Levy be thinking tonight, only hours after breathing a sigh of relief that his coach had been acquitted of tax evasion at Southwark Crown Court. Levy has played hardball more than once before when his star attraction wanted to leave.

Tottenham are flying this season again, third in the league, seven points off the leaders and playing the most attractive football in the country. The loss to Spurs of their mercurial manager will be painful for a club finally sniffing success after years of frustration. Qualifying for the Champions League may seem immaterial as Redknapp was always going to leave for England in the summer, but a league championship would have been a fitting send-off. Perhaps Redknapp will wait until July, or take the job part-time from now, but however one looks at it, the unexpected end of Capello's England career has left a right mess for the F.A. to clean up.

Capello won around two-thirds of his games and England most recently beat World Champions Spain, but lost when it counted, miserably against Germany at the World Cup Finals in South Africa. England were lethargic and insipid from the moment they touched down and lost Rio Ferdinand to injury, failed to beat the USA and Algeria before they scraped past Slovenia, only to be thrashed in the second round.

He has manifestly failed for the first time in his career, and his English misadventure tarnishes his previously exemplary record. Never mastering the language helped nobody, while his stern style, although at first praised for instilling much-needed discipline in his overpaid charges, became brittle and unhelpful in the final dispute which caused his downfall.

Pride came before his fall, as the Italian publicly slammed his employers on RAI television, precipitating an acrimonious parting of ways today in London. He was foolish to speak out like that, but the F.A. also failed to establish an effective relationship in the first place where both parties respected each other. Being overruled over John Terry's captaincy for a second time was too much for Fabio to take.

Yet sadly Capello always seemed a hired gun rather than an integral team member, his poor English hampering a full immersion into a country and its football culture. Allegedly eschewing the telephone, Capello's communication line to the F.A. became fatally garbled when assistant Franco Baldini, who spoke fluent English, left to become Roma's general manager last autumn.

Redknapp seems to tick all the boxes for England, but we must hold our horses before we can toast our first silverware since 1966. Will the inability to bring in foreign players do for chequebook-happy Harry, and will the lack of regular games frustrate his pally style? Or will the higher level of competition simply prove too much for his abilities?

Has a nation once again got drunk on the idea of a magical saviour instead of looking at the bigger picture of a national football culture behind Germany's in organisation and tactics and trailing Holland and Spain in terms of technique? And why has the F.A. still not introduced a winter break, one of the key reasons for England's demise at the World Cup, which Capello highlighted.

FABIO CAPELLO'S ENGLAND RECORD:
Played 42, Won 28 (67%), Drew 8, Lost 6
World Cup 2010: Second Round

(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile

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French lessons for the crème anglaise

England 1:2 France - International Friendly, Wembley, Att 85,495.

Another false dawn for England. Another French dressing-down. The euphoria following the Three Lions' impressive Euro 2012 qualifying wins over Bulgaria and Switzerland has been replaced by a familiar torpor.

A dismal 0-0 qualifying draw at home to Montenegro followed by last night's 1-2 friendly reverse to France have sharpened the Fleet Street knives once more for Fabio Capello. The opposition was pertinent. The French team collapsed in mutiny in South Africa, were eliminated by a weak host nation and flew home before the cartes postales. England had it bad but France a lot worse and are still lacking aces Franck Ribéry and Patrice Evra, in exile alongside bête noire Nicolas Anelka, who has probably played his last game for his country.

Yet Laurent Blanc's men played yesterday with verve and élan, like they had turned over a brand new leaf, and showed hints of a real renaissance for a soccer nation that was on top of the world a decade ago. The hosts on the other hand were still warbling from an old hymn book of tired tunes.

To be fair to Capello, it was a friendly and not an eliminator, but the warning signs were loud and clear once more, a mournful drone of English shortcomings echoing around the vast arena. Ball control, positional awareness, tactical acumen, imagination - why are these skills still so hard for English footballers to learn? We should not blame the players - they have not been taught properly. The youthful replacements drafted in fell short with the exception of Newcastle's Andy Carroll, who had a mature and promising debut as a lone target man, bagging air superiority from the off and troubling the French defence at low level on at least one occasion.

The 4-2-3-1 showed Capello had learnt the lesson of Bloemfontein and ditched his static 4-4-2, but too many of its practitioners failed to function. Theo Walcott again showed he has pace and control but little else, Kieron Gibbs and Jordan Henderson proved they had been fast-tracked into the national team too quickly while Gareth Barry, not long ago the subject of a great transfer tussle, was as lethargic and ineffective as he had been in South Africa.

The insertion of Ashley Young and Adam Johnson on the wings after the break, along with Peter Crouch's goalscoring cameo, helped turn the blue tide but equally showed the talent pool is rather shallow at the Football Association. The fact is England need ten Jack Wilsheres pushing for selection.

A (French?) revolution is what is required, with a huge increase in the number of coaches and a wholesale shift in mentality to emphasize skills acquisition and tactical intelligence above winning at youth level. Dennis Bergkamp, exquisitely gifted in a way most Englishmen are not, believes the ages of 8 to 12 are the key ones for developing talent, years when most English kids are not being properly schooled in the game. At Wembley, the blue shirts did the basics better than the whites - controlling and distributing accurately at speed while being aware of the movement of their teammates. English football is still obsessed by the individual instead of the collective, as a cursory glance at any tabloid's back pages will confirm.

"Skill-wise at the moment, the English players are really, really, not at the level", David Ginola said to the BBC post-match. Quite so, England had no-one with the sublime dribbling skills of Samir Nasri, the elegant playmaking of Yoann Gourcuff or the penetrative power of Florent Malouda on display at Wembley.

The morning after the debacle brought a modicum of hope with the belated announcement that the National Football Centre had at last been given the green light after years of stasis. France's Clairefontaine site has acquired mythic status, with Italy's Coverciano not far behind. St George's Park in Burton-on-Trent will be a huge advance from previous bases at Bisham Abbey and Lilleshall, with the ambitious goal of its coaches training a quarter of a million people to teach football by 2018.

The only hope remains in the future. For the next couple of tournaments we can reasonably expect the motherland of the game to show flashes of hope but then hit that invisible forcefield known as the quarter-finals, while fans and media alike blame particular players or coaches for another England disaster with its roots in youth coaching.

(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile

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City In For Milner

Reports today are suggesting that moneybags, Manchester City, have made a "big money" offer for Aston Villa's versatile midfielder, James Milner. £20m+ is the figure being quoted. It's been a fairly meteoric rise for a player that until very recently many still considered as average at best.

The season just gone has been Milner's finest to date but that's against some average competition. He showed promise at Leeds but became one dimensional, he flattered to deceive at Newcastle where he habitually wasted possession, he was then shunted out to Villa on loan and after a year back at Newcastle in their relegation season he signed for Villa permanently for £12m. This is where Milner finally began to find his feet.

He was perhaps unfortunate at Newcastle that the man who signed him, the late Sir Bobby Robson, was unceremoniously sacked and replaced by Graeme Souness who wasn't keen on Milner's attributes. It was David O'Leary who took him to Villa on loan with reasonable success but it is under Martin O'Neill that he has flourished. Only 23 he has already played under 13 different managers (including caretakers) and cites the stability at Villa as a big reason for his improvement.

What shined through Milner's Newcastle years and protracted move to Villa was a calm level headed attitude learned from senior players around him during his evolving career. This attitude has seen Milner become the mature player he is today.

Able to understand and carry out instruction, he allies this with an understanding of football that enables him to play in several positions. These are precisely the qualities that England coach Fabio Capello likes in a player and precisely the reason why Milner is a cert for the final 23 that will travel to South Africa.

His current form and performances over the past year cannot be argued with and he has eclipsed the likes of club mate Ashley Young. He fully deserves his place in the squad but is he good enough for the first team? That remains to be seen and he is perhaps more of a safety valve to cover a few positions and be available to protect a lead should the need arise.

He doesn't have the creativity of Joe Cole or Steven Gerrard. He doesn't have the midfield goal threat of Frank Lampard. He doesn't have the blistering pace of Aaron Lennon or Theo Walcott. He doesn't even cross as well as Adam Johnson.

He does most things very well but jack of all trades is often master of none and I don't see a starting position for Milner. He is probably the direct replacement for Owen Hargreaves; a confident assured penalty taker (another reason to have him in reserve given England's major tournament shootout record) who can cover the full length of both flanks and play right through midfield.

Fair play to the lad, he's proved me wrong and the next couple of steps in his career could see him become a World Cup winner and key component of the most ambitious club side in the world. Now that's progress.

BruiseLee

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