Published: January 26 2008 02:00
Sometimes a country is so lacking in skills that it needs to fly in foreign experts. England's new football manager, the Italian Fabio Capello, is this kind of overpaid consultant, arriving in business class to tell the natives what to do. His own country are world champions. England, starting with their game against Switzerland on February 6, need to ditch their moronic brand of football. Here are some Italian virtues Capello will impart. All are familiar to any Italian who has ever played parish football, but not to England's best players:
A game lasts 90 minutes. Habitually English footballers charge out of the gate, run around like lunatics, and get tired well before the match is over, even if they aren't hungover.
You see this in England's peculiar scoring record in big tournaments. In every World Cup ever played, most goals were scored in the second halves of matches. But England, in their past five big tournaments, scored 22 goals in the first halves, and only 13 in the second. Their record in crucial games is even starker: in the matches in which they got eliminated from these tournaments, they scored seven of their eight goals before half-time. In short, England perform like a cheap battery. Italians pace themselves. They take quiet periods in games, when they sit back and make sure nothing happens, because they aim to score in the closing minutes, when opponents tire and gaps appear. In the past World Cup, Italy knocked out Australia and Germany with goals in the final three minutes.
In defence, the greatest virtue is tidiness. Early in the past World Cup final, Fabio Grosso, Italy's full-back, ended a dangerous French attack with a tackle. The ball rolled out for a corner. In any other team, Grosso would have got a pat on the head. But not with Italy. Instead, his team-mate Rino Gattuso beetled across to wag his fingers in Grosso's face in admonition: Italy did not give away corners.
That standard of punctiliousness exists nowhere else. Capello once described defenders as "bookkeepers, who must ensure we don't go too far into debt". In the traditional English conception, defenders are lionhearted soldiers.
Capello wishes he could scream at England's defenders for giving away corners. First, he will need to teach them the basics that Italians learn aged eight: when you mark a player, stand between him and goal. When you defend, watch your man not the ball.
Generally in Italian football there is an obsession with avoiding error, a seriousness about detail that does not exist in England.
The greatest physical virtue is suppleness, not strength. English footballers tend to be big lads. England's central defenders, John Terry and Rio Ferdinand, stand over 1.85m. Keepers are beefy: think of David Seaman or Paul Robinson. The most admired midfielders are strong men such as Steven Gerrard or Bryan Robson. This is another hangover from the English idea that a good footballer resembles a good soldier. Italians select for suppleness. Their best keepers, Gianluigi Buffon or Francesco Toldo, are slim. Their best defender, Fabio Cannavaro, is only 1.76m tall and more gymnast than soldier. In the 2006 World Cup final Cannavaro once made three sliding tackles in just over a second, jumping up instantly after each. Italian teams practise gymnastics.
Tabloid newspapers should not select the team. British tabloids traditionally rule all of UK life including the England team. Any player whom the tabloids anoint as a star must be picked, or the newspapers (to dip into tabloid-speak for a moment) will "slam England boss".
It's a Hollywood-style star system. Gerrard and Lampard for years shared central midfield even though they are virtually the same player. David Beckham played far too long, Michael Owen even when unfit. Defensive midfielders seldom featured because none had big names.
Capello has no interest in tabloids or "stars". He says: "The players speak with their feet on the field. That is the real news." He treats stars as serfs, as illustrated by a story told by Simon Zwartkruis, biographer of the Dutch footballer Clarence Seedorf. After Seedorf and Christian Karembeu had helped Sampdoria beat Capello's Milan, Capello approached them in the stadium's parking lot: Capello: I'm managing Real Madrid next season and wondered whether you wanted to come with me.
Seedorf and Karembeu, simultaneously: Yes.
Capello walked off. The next time Seedorf saw him was in Madrid.
You need a defensive midfielder, probably two. To Italians, England's habit of playing without a defensive midfielder is as silly as playing without a keeper. Italians call the defensive midfielder a mediano, or francobollatore - one who sticks to his opponent like a postage stamp. John Foot writes in his excellent Calcio: A History of Italian Football, "Italian managers were occasionally tempted to fill their midfield with mediani , dispensing altogether with the ephemeral skill of playmakers and wingers . . . Without these players, no team could compete in any game." England demonstrated this nicely when losing to Croatia and failing to qualify for Euro 2008
Tue Jan 29, 2008 3:04 am
