Fabio Capello hinted last night that he may try to persuade the likes of Paul Scholes and Jamie Carragher to reverse their decision to retire from international football. The new England manager, who spent the afternoon watching the top four Barclays Premier League clubs go head to head on television, also said that he would start English lessons today and intends to live in London.

“The players are first-rate and there are plenty to choose from,” Capello said. “Plus, there’s one or two who retired who I hope to bring back.

“It will take time and results to convince everyone. In sporting terms it’s a very important challenge, and a tough one. I will have to get used to not working with players every day. It’s harder to make an impact when you’re only seeing the players once in a while.”

Capello’s first test will come this afternoon, when he is presented to the media at the FA’s Soho Square headquarters, but he said that he already recognises he has work to do with a team that failed to qualify for Euro 2008. “They lost drive and determination,” he said. “I saw it against Russia. They weren’t themselves. I need to help them find their confidence, a bit like I did with Real Madrid.

“I’ve been lucky to work with many superstars in the past, but at club level it’s different. With a country you need to work differently. You need to push the right buttons. And you have to work quickly, because you only get them for a week at a time. And in that time period you have to recreate the right climate to get the right results. If you don’t do that, you won’t succeed.

“I start English lessons tomorrow and I’ll live in London. When you go to a foreign country you have to adapt to it, not the other way around.”

Capello has been backed to succeed with England by the man who sacked him in June. Capello won the Spanish league title on the final day of last season with Real but was shown the door by Ramón Calderón because his team had failed to excite the club’s demanding fans.

“I wish and hope he has good luck and does really well in his adventure with the English national side,” Calderón, the Real president, said. “I am sure that he will do well because he is an expert coach in difficult situations and, currently, England are not in a straightforward situation. The English national team are suffering because many of their best teams have a lack of English players in their ranks, but, even so, I am confident he will succeed.”

Capello spent the weekend working in Italy as a match summariser for RAI, the Italian television station, and putting the finishing touches to his final column for Marca, the Spanish sports paper. He has promised to give up his media commitments to concentrate on his new job.

“From now on I am going to concentrate on this new task 100 per cent as I have always done when I have been coach of a team,” Capello said. “Now I am responsible for a national team which will need my complete dedication. I will stop working with the media because I want to be fully concentrated on this new challenge.

“This new journey will not be easy, but I am sure that it will be exciting. I hope England will soon be one of the best teams in the world again.”

Although Capello can expect a warm welcome this afternoon, there is unease that he is planning on working with an all-Italian backroom staff and questions will also be asked about whether the England manager should be earning £4.8 million a year. Sir Trevor Brooking, the FA’s director of football development, insisted that the Italian’s wages had been blown out of proportion. “The contract is based on rewarding success and that’s what any top coach would expect,” Brooking said. “You’ve got to pay the going rate.”

Capello is expected to meet senior England players — significantly, John Terry, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard — before his first game in charge, against Switzerland on February 6, and Marcel Desailly, the former Chelsea and France defender, who played for Capello at AC Milan in the 1990s, has warned the England squad to prepare for the worst. “When you are in the training camps, you cannot do what you want, Capello has his own rules,” Desailly said. “Capello does not receive advice from anybody. He would die with his ideas and, most of the time, they are the correct ones.

“Players can feel the pressure Capello is putting on them from the sidelines and, if you are a top player, then, yes, you will lift your level.”

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