No more nicknames - until Fabio Capello leaves the room. “What d’you reckon, Wazza?”

You can’t stop footballers giving each other stupid names any more than you can stop them buying flash cars. Cas, Big Fella, Mingus - no one ever called me Tony. If someone had shouted out “Tony!” I don’t think I’d have looked round.

It’s what players do. British players, anyway. It was apt when Rio Ferdinand said that working with the new England manager was like going to a new school. My schooldays didn’t end when I became a player. Being a footballer is like having an extended childhood: banter, pranks, giggles. You can be a 27-year-old with a wife and kids yet still have the same concept of responsibility as a teenager.

Lots of British managers who played before the mid-Nineties think this attitude helps team spirit. They are scared to suppress it in case it destroys “the bond”. In contrast, foreign managers tend to be alarmed. They think that employees hiding each other’s stuff, pinching colleagues’ mobiles and sending rude texts and cutting up their mates’ clothes is not the sign of a healthy working environment.

Expert View

Gerrard is a conundrum. Where is the international equivalent of his second-half performance against AC Milan in the Champions League final in Istanbul?

Martin Samuel

• More

• Post a comment

BACKGROUND

• Owen out of step with Capello's tough regime

• Capello replaces Game Boys with trials by video

• Who will be Captain Marvel?

• In the beginning was the word and the English word was Boss

BACKGROUND

• Reputations count for nothing, says Brooking

• Capello’s men can’t be one of the lads

• Milner sinks Irish as qualification in sight

• The Insider - February 6

Multimedia

• Live from 8pm: England v Switzerland

• You pick the team and the tactics

• Statistics: England managerial debuts

Foreign players agree. They are simply more mature than their British counterparts. At my French clubs I used to sit in team meetings where the coach went into so much detail that Brits would have fallen asleep or tried to slit their wrists.

They were like lessons, with tactics on the blackboard. When this happens in England, boredom means players aren’t good at absorbing the information. If instructions aren’t followed in games, managers end up talking to players with the same tone that I use to my seven-year-old. “Did you brush your teeth?” “Did you pick up your man at the far post?”

Any import who’s played here will have stories about the childish behaviour of their teammates. The “British mentality” is legendary in France. Bizarrely, they love The Benny Hill Show over there. Maybe they think it’s reality TV.

Capello will believe that you can’t be serious on the pitch if you’re not serious off it. He’s right. Until I went to France, I was a lazy, p***-taking, mediocre player. I finally realised that the laddish antics that made me popular with the boys were damaging my career, though if I’d shunned the dressing-room culture instead of embracing it, I’d have been isolated and that would have brought its own problems.

Capello has been described as a sergeant-major. What football likes to call “military discipline” is what is known in other walks of life simply as professionalism. So when you say breakfast is at 9.30, you don’t get stragglers turning up at 9.45, forcing the 10am meeting to be delayed.

Since Capello has encouraged the sense that no one in the squad is safe, none will want to risk bending the rules. With no permanent captain named, the candidates will want to press their credentials by behaving extra-responsibly.

The banter has calmed at club level because of the influence of foreign players and managers, so perhaps in the past the squad has viewed England get-togethers as a bit of a release. The mentality needs to shift and Capello will change it, up to a point.

No golf, easy on the video games, but the players will have to find ways of killing time and easing the boredom of all those hours in planes and hotels. They’ll need to have a laugh. Capello is smart, he’ll know that. So he won’t care if the players call him “Boss” to his face and something less respectful behind his back as long as his instructions are being followed and the team is winning; as long as he feels he’s the leader of men, not boys.

Now what?

Now that fun is banned by Fabio Capello, what to do instead?

- Don’t play cards, play Monopoly. Real Monopoly, that is, with real houses (and, sadly, real levels of super tax). But do try to stay out of jail.

- Instead of golf, go and see an opera. Twilight of the Gods will do for those who miss Beckham, or The Force of Destiny for those with an eye on 2010, but Così fan tutte, with its theme of fiancée-swapping, should be avoided.

- Instead of text messaging, learn to flirt in semaphore.

Explore Football

• Premier League

• Football League

• Scotland

• European Football

• International Football

• TheGame

• Live Match Tracker

• The Fink Tank

• Fantasy Football