There is a strange void in our national life: we have no England manager to
tear apart. After devouring two in the space of little more than a year,
Fabio Capello is untouchable, halfway between Sir Alf Ramsey and God.
Suddenly, the England football team have a place, a purpose, a meaning, a
future. Suddenly we believe in England. That means we believe in Capello;
all of us, watchers, journalists, pundits, players. We have no option.
The England team have abandoned their clown's jalopy with square wheels and
explosions and bits falling off. Now they are cruising on in a six-wheeled
pink Rolls-Royce bearing the numberplate FAB 10. There is no ducking the
matter: England are go and Capello is the Lady Penelope of the new world.
Sober and serious football writers, in so far as such a category exists, are
comparing Capello and Ramsey. Translation: they think England will win the
World Cup in South Africa in less than two years' time. Why not? On
Wednesday, England's second team - most of the No1 side were injured - went
to Germany and won 2-1. What more are they capable of?
It is almost impossible for an Italian to be monosyllabic, but Capello has
come as near to mastering this as is linguistically possible. In his
masterly near-silence, he gives an impression of mysterious and limitless
strength, endless knowledge and total mastery, and right now, it seems as if
these things have a basis in fact.
He is beyond criticism. This state is seldom found outside sport, and not
often within, but when a man takes England through four World Cup qualifying
matches without losing a point, there is no room for doubt. Capello is
unimprovable.
Odd to think that 12 months ago we were happily disembowelling Steve McClaren
after his England team failed to qualify for the European Championship
finals of last summer. After a deeply dodgy qualifying campaign, he gambled
on the wrong goalkeeper in his final match and lacked the worldliness to
make Croatia settle for the draw that would suit both teams.
McClaren's treatment was merciless; well, we had got our eye in for
blood-letting with the departure of Sven-Göran Eriksson after the World Cup
in 2006. How we hated Eriksson, a man we had once loved. He was now “the man
who betrayed the Golden Generation”; presumably because he arranged the
metatarsal injuries to key players that derailed three successive campaigns.
But look, we're not talking about rationality here, we are talking about
football. We're talking about belief. For there is no such thing as a so-so
England manager. He is either a genius or a fool. Right now, Capello is in
the former category and we must live with that for all but five months, or
until England next play a World Cup qualifier.
There will be a friendly or so before then - got to keep those Barclays
Premier League managers twitching - but Capello's record of P4 W4 will be
unaffected, with spice added by the delightful victory against Germany in
that rare thing, a friendly conducted like a contest that mattered.
Capello's genius, then, is an established fact of national life. Odd to think
that he has been a genius for only ten weeks; and he will have been in
charge for a year on December 14. The establishment of his genius has been a
long, slow process.
Capello began with the usual hard-man stuff such as dropping David Beckham -
then on 99 caps - to make a point, and then selecting Beckham to make some
other point, and rotating captains and the squad in a way that looked
muddled and unconvincing. Why were we paying this man six million quid? Why
can't we have an Englishman as manager? Maybe Steve and Glenda and Kev
weren't so bad after all.
Capello's first match was a 2-1 victory against Switzerland, hardly a result
to make the watching world say oo-er. After a defeat in France, in which he
allowed Beckham his 100th cap, Capello looked like Sven come again. Beating
the United States 2-0 didn't make his team look like world-beaters and after
a draw with the Czech Republic at Wembley in yet another friendly, Capello
looked like just another overpaid bumbler. England then opened the
qualifiers with a deeply uninspiring 2-0 win against Andorra and Capello's
stock slid further.
Football's endless fascination comes from its volatility, from the speed at
which everything changes, from the extraordinary way in which a new reality
can replace the old inside a few minutes.
England went to Croatia and won 4-1, with a hat-trick from Theo Walcott, and
suddenly, everybody believed in the boss. That changed everything, and that
is because the fundamental art of management is to build a church of true
believers.
They don't have to like you, they don't even have to understand you, they just
have to believe in you. As soon as Eriksson had a few agnostics in his side,
the game was up, and McClaren generally faced the enemy with 11 atheists.
Eriksson had his believers at various stages in his time with England. In his
first World Cup in 2002, high on the 5-1 defeat of Germany in Munich and
with a thrilling victory over Denmark in the round of 16, for a moment the
impossible seemed possible. When Eriksson gambled on Wayne Rooney in the
European Championship finals two years later, Rooney's brilliance briefly
reignited the belief.
Right now, Capello has believers and this is the most precious of gifts. How
to find it? How to maintain it? First, you must be a man to whom self-doubt
is a stranger. A belief in your own omnipotence is the first qualification
for a successful manager. If you doubt that, run your eye down the sharp end
of the Premier League and you will be convinced.
Right decisions and right manner are important; a right image helps.
Eriksson's gnomic utterances in wilfully broken English convinced for a
while, but McClaren's pleading reasonableness was a non-starter. Capello's
square jaw and square glasses work pretty well.
But it all comes down to results, and this is the great circular truth of
football. Good results can come only from belief, and belief can come only
from good results. Capello's engine clearly doesn't start well from cold,
but now, with five deeply gratifying results, one on top of the other,
belief has brought results and results have brought belief in a perfectly
efficient closed feedback system.
This transformation has been astonishing and very, very football. Capello has
ridden it beautifully and now it all looks like a master plan. Perhaps it
was, but that doesn't really matter. Management is like Ronaldinho's famous
free kick against England: it really doesn't matter whether he meant it or
not. What matters is the result.
There is no point in striving for a rational assessment of Capello, because
the process he presides over is irrational. He will achieve still greater
results for as long as he maintains this state of belief, and vice versa. He
may even win a penalty shoot-out - or does that strain belief too far? But
no, let's settle for the fact that Capello can do anything, for, certainly,
he can do no wrong until April.
