With national pride bruised by a catastrophic World Cup, one last jingoistic theory survives: it’s all the fault of the Italian. Such bad thinking must be strongly resisted. Sacking Fabio Capello would constitute a terrible waste of a rare opportunity. This must be the moment when English football embraces root-and-branch reform, not a revolving-door policy at the top.
The tragedy of this World Cup campaign is not that England didn’t pick the right players or have the right manager. It’s even worse than that. They had perhaps the best manager in the world, and few doubted that he picked mostly the right players. Yes, a case could be made for Theo Walcott. But England’s World Cup would not have been rescued by one athletic, inconsistent winger.
To learn from defeat requires an understanding of causes. The FA has now tried every type of coach, from passionate motivators to coolheaded rationalists. None has succeeded, so it is obviously time to look elsewhere for the real reasons for England’s failures. It’s time to invest in the grass roots, not to redecorate the shop window. There are now 34,000 elite Uefa-trained coaches in Germany. England has fewer than 3,000. After Germany’s defeat at Euro 2000, all that nation’s top clubs were told to establish youth academies or face having their licences revoked.
Supporters may crave the thrill of change, even if it is only cosmetic. But José Mourinho or Arsène Wenger would probably not fix the England team, even if either could be persuaded to take on the impossible job. Unless English football addresses its structural inadequacies, we won’t need a great manager to win the World Cup. We will need a miracle.