SOCCER
Capello tries to change the way the English think
By Rob Hughes
Published: December 16, 2008
Dylan Martinez/Reuters
Fabio Capello watching during his first victory as England manager, in a friendly international against Switzerland at Wembley.
LONDON: "When I arrived," Capello said. "I did not understand why the same players were successful in their clubs, but not with England. After one game, I understood the problem completely."
A lifetime ago, a young golfer was told by his father "Don't tell anybody how good you are, show them."
Arnold Palmer, you could say, became as good as his father Deacon's words. Throughout most of that period of sporting history, the England soccer players have tended to do the reverse.
They have talked a better game than they played.Perhaps that is changing. Precisely a year ago, after England failed to reach the Euro 2008 finals, the country hired a foreigner to change the ways of players who were fabulously rich celebrities going nowhere as a national team.
Fabio Capello, a proven winner as a coach in Italian and Spanish club soccer, could barely string together a sentence in English last December. However, like Palmer senior, he knows that the first maxim of sport is that action speaks louder than words.
"When I arrived," Capello told journalists at a lunch in London on Monday. "I did not understand why the same players were successful in their clubs, but not with England. After one game, I understood the problem completely.
"I realized that the problem was in the mind of the players. Now we are better."Better is an understatement. England has run up four straight victories in qualifying games for the 2010 World Cup, including a sound beating of Croatia, the team that ended its European qualification last year.
Capello brought some old-fashioned disciplines.
He told his players how to dress, how to behave around his team camp. He introduced a dietary regimen so strict that some players' wives and girlfriends smuggled snacks inside their men's travel bags. (Poor Bertille)
They think the Italian "Mister" didn't know this? It reminds me of João Saldanha, the supposedly strict Brazilian coach of the late 1960s, laughing in the knowledge that curfews on wine, women and song were there to be broken, just so long as he, the coach, was not confronted with the evidence of the breaches.
Players, Saldanha would argue over the very drinks that were confiscated from their rooms, will dare to be men given half a chance. But a team needs an aura of common purpose and togetherness.
So maybe, 40 years on, Capello is working the same routine? Maybe he is playing the father-figure, slightly detached from players who, after all, are there to perform in the same sport he once successfully played, for Italy against England?
His observation seems to be that England needed a psychologist more than a coach. For one or two, perhaps, a psychiatrist would not go amiss. They were paper tigers, boasting about their lifestyles, but inwardly afraid of the expectation heaped upon them.
England, the mother nation of organized soccer, has only once, in 1966, won the World Cup. That was at Wembley Stadium, which has been dismantled and rebuilt. Capello observed that it is in this new arena, packed to its 90,000 capacity, that the crowd and the players seem to have grown disillusioned with one another.
Capello himself uses the word psychology. He says now that the greater part of his first year has not been separating the good players from the bad, but convincing the players that with work, with a group spirit, with confidence, they could be better than they think.
A psychologist in a track suit bearing the three lions, England's crest?
"Good psychologist, bad players," retorts Capello, "makes it impossible to win. It is important to change the mentality of the players, but we need to have good players to win."Once that penny dropped, the victories flowed. England beat Andorra, Croatia, Kazakhstan and Belarus in World Cup qualifiers, and ended 2008 by outplaying Germany to win 2-1 in Berlin. However, Capello believes that the turning point came not in victory, but in a defeat against France, in Capello's second game as England's savior.
"We lost, but in the dressing room I said to the players that I was happy because they made a step forward." The players, he remembers, thought him crazy. "But I told them I am happy because we played against the World Cup runner-up, in Paris, and for half an hour we played well. If we can play well here for half an hour, we can play the whole game like that."
Capello's problem is time with the players, and continuity. He has no game until a friendly in Spain next February; his time working with the players is confined to a handful of days around each international match often months apart.
All Capello's triumphs so far have come through drumming his mentality into players he could work with every day at AC Milan, Juventus and Real Madrid.
At 62, this is as much a challenge to Capello's adaptability. The language, which he understood better than he let on, matters less than the personality.
He watches players in their clubs, and stores up memories of errors from watching video recordings of England games.
"We have to eliminate mistakes," he said. "We want to get better, but we need time."
He is clear, uncomplicated and, at times, ruthless. And he looks for fresh talent. (Ahhh boy Maturana)
"I am very happy for players that play with Aston Villa," he says. "They are young and are performing." He singled out two players who have appeared for England - Gaby Agbonlahor and Ashley Young - and one who has not, James Milner.
"He is a very interesting young player. He scored two goals for the Under 21 team against the Republic of Ireland, and these Villa players impress me for the future."
They are all forwards, all quick, and capable of playing on the wings. Their rise threatens Michael Owen and David Beckham, the icons of the past.
Owen has yet to be selected by Capello, and Beckham's chances of gaining the 108th cap he needs to equal England's former captain Bobby Moore depend entirely on what progress he makes at AC Milan.
Beckham is due to start a three- month loan with Milan. It will surprise nobody that his first sessions come on tour, on a commercial break in Dubai starting Dec. 29.
"I will watch him if he plays for Milan," Capello said. "If he doesn't play, he will not be in the squad. I will decide after talking to the coaches - not on sympathy." David Beckham, like Arnold Palmer, will have to show them if he can still be good.
