As English football and its commentators turn up at the inevitable post mortem - many wielding a machete instead of a scalpel - it’s hard to resist pointing out that a problem often seems far worse the closer you get and perspective can often be lost. Writing in my column in The Times, I have explained, that when seen from abroad, it appears that the country that gave birth to the game wakes up this morning realising that it isn’t as good as it thought it was - but from the outside looking in, neither is it as bad as it thinks it is.
For once, England matched first class opposition for possession; had more shots on target than the Germans; hit the bar three times and - while it’s entirely laudable for the English to refuse to blame the goal that was never given – the neutral view form abroad is that an injustice did prove decisive. Any team that comes back from 2-0 down to level the score has the momentum: England would have been flying, the Germans reeling.
There’s been plenty of sniggering at Capello’s assertion that England played well, but believe it or not, in the period following the disallowed goal right up until the German’s killer third – they did. Germany’s third and fourth came on the counter – who knows what might have happened with scores level. I’ll leave it to my English colleagues to dismantle their Golden Generation – but there were positives to take from the game.
Coaches must have, at least, one of three variables on their side, if they are to keep themselves in a job: the dressing room, the football or the results. For example, Pep Guardiola has all three in his favour. Arsene Wenger survives with the dressing room and the football; Maradona started out with just the dressing room behind him, and the football and results followed. Dunga could lift the trophy with just the results – and we were supposed to be saying the same about Fabio Capello.
Those of us have seen Fabio up close in Italy and Spain, believed he would be successful, because he would win football matches – even if the football failed to deliver the plaudits. However, as the FA takes two weeks to prevaricate over the inevitable, the resultista cannot point to the victories that might have got him out of trouble. The results have let him down, the football was never going to win the hearts and minds of the fans – and he no longer has the dressing room either. Of course, there will be the public assurances that the players are behind the coach that we’d expect from model professionals like Steven Gerrard – but privately, the distance between manger and players has grown throughout the tournament.
Before we hammer the professionalism of English players – remember, his charges in Italy and Spain also complained about Capello’s authoritarianism, but unlike the England squad, they never had to live with him 24/7 in a tournament environment. He has failed to bridge the cultural divide both on and off the pitch, yet simultaneously ignored his own observations about what makes English players different from their European counterparts: if he felt that they lacked the technical and tactical versatility – why then play five of them out of position?
Even more astonishing is the fact that a coach who is renowned for finding solutions and who was supposed to liberate the English game form its shackles to the past, became undone by his own rigidity.
Yet it is amazing how many of those who were claiming that England would beat Germany beforehand, are the same people demanding a complete overhaul of the English game in the aftermath. It would be a travesty to dismiss one of the cleverest men in the game without ever hearing his rationale behind his decisions and Capello deserves he opportunity to make his case, in Italian if need be, beyond the broken English explanations given in the bear pit environment of a press conference.
The FA and many of those demanding his dismissal had absolute faith in him a few weeks ago; they owe him the opportunity to address what went wrong - and for all those claiming that English football is broken, the sensible thing would be to listen to someone who has seen those failings up close. He may never get the opportunity to fix them, but it would be another failing of the English game if it made no attempt to learn from yet another talented foreign coach tripped up by the language barrier.
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