FA: Fabio Capello Will Remain England Manager

[eskey8]

news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Fabio-Capello-Is-To-Continue-As-England-Manager-The-Football-Association-Have-Confirmed/Article/201007115658439?lpos=UK_News_Carousel_Region_4&lid=ARTICLE_15658439_Fabio_Capello_Is_To_Continue_As_England_Manager_The_Football_Association_Have_Confirmed

[eskey8]

From the beeb................

Fabio Capello is to continue as England manager, the Football Association has confirmed.

The Italian, 64, found himself under pressure following a disastrous World Cup campaign that saw England thrashed by Germany in their last-16 tie.

On Monday he was told he would learn his fate in two weeks, only to be given full FA backing four days later.

"We remain convinced that Fabio is the best man for the job," Club England chairman Sir Dave Richards said.

[Macmoish]

Pathetic England

[obk]

How can anyone be so stupid they give a coach a new contract just before the world cup? Is it not obvious that you let them play the cup first and:

A: He did great and was the whole reason for the english world cup gold. Give him a great new contract.
B: Did ok and we believe he can build an even better team next time, new somewhat improved contract.
C: England was a disgrace - sack him.

How hard can it be?

[klr]

English Football RIP

Absolutely Pathetic, Spineless & Shameful stuff.

English FA hang your heads in shame, you've just killed our national game for good all for the price of £6 Million a year.

[Markqpr]

Just so I'm remembering this correctly, the FA renogotiated his contract shortly after he launched The Capello index, thereby declaring an outside business interest to his £6m a year job, they then removed the clause that would have allowed them to rightly sack him in the event that we have a disastrous WC campaign, which we then do and now they are saying he's the best man for the job?

Sounds about right for the FA for me.

Business as usual.

[Macmoish]

Somehow I don't think Brazil are going to emulate England in this respect. Dunga to be gone, I'd imagine, very soon.

[klr]

Even by The English FA's standards this one is unprecedented.

They have really broken new ground & stunk the whole country out with this one.

Sir Alf Ramsey & Sir Bobby Robson will be turning in their graves at what has been done to their game all in the self interests of keeping a couple of ex public schoolboys in their jobs & the gravy train keeps rolling along and along and along.

Absolutely Shameful beyond words, an undisputed low point of utter humiliation fopr English Football in my 31 years on this planet, literally unbelievable that this has come to pass!

Sick beyond words.

[londonranger]

The problem with english football Very long but enormously telling.

www.farpostreport.com/content/view/1538/

[Lonegunmen]

I did enjoy watching old big mouth calling the keeper a clown - he who denied England in 1973 for the '74 WC. A dislocated finger early on and then a match winning performance. Only England can shoot themselves in the foot on regular occassions. Not even the african countries can do that.

[Macmoish]

Guardian

England convinced by Fabio Capello's call for new blood• Compensation not an issue in retaining manager
• Italian more determined than ever to succeed
(3)Tweet this (10)Dominic Fifield in Cape Town guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 July 2010

The Football Association's decision to retain Fabio Capello as England's manager was based purely on footballing reasons rather than financial pressures, with the Italian now vowing to inject new blood into his side ahead of the Euro 2012 qualifying campaign.

The FA issued a statement on Friday confirming that the 64-year-old will see out the remaining two seasons of his £6m-a-year contract after the four-man Club England board had filed their recommendation in the wake of the team's dismal performance at the World Cup finals. Capello, who is currently on holiday with his wife, Laura, was subsequently informed of the decision that he was to be retained in a phone call from the offshoot body's chairman, Sir Dave Richards.

The FA's acting chairman, Roger Burden, had made it clear to the Club England board – made up of Richards, the managing director, Adrian Bevington, Sir Trevor Brooking and the FA's general secretary, Alex Horne – that a decision should be made regardless of the hefty compensation that would have been due had the Italian's contract been terminated. The figure that would have been payable to the manager is understood to have been about £6m and did not vary dramatically from the sum that would have been due had a break clause not been scrapped just prior to the tournament in South Africa.

Richards had initially indicated that there would be a cooling-off period of two weeks following the 4-1 defeat by Germany, though Horne moved to speed up the process, conscious of the indignity in effectively leaving Capello dangling. The FA has since been at pains to stress to the Italian that there will be no interference in team affairs, even if some evidence of improvement will be required if he is truly to recover the reputation tarnished by his team's World Cup failure.

Capello has already indicated he will seek to refresh an ageing squad, with the campaign to reach the finals in Ukraine and Poland to begin in earnest in September. "I am more determined than ever to succeed with the England team," he said. "Sir Dave Richards has called me to tell me everyone at the FA wants me to continue. I explained it is very important we use the disappointment as a motivation in the future.

"I can assure the fans I am now fully focused on our European qualifying fixtures, starting with the friendly against Hungary in August. We will look to introduce new players to give the team new energy and I will use all my experience to take England forward. I am extremely proud to be the England manager, it means so much to me and I am determined to succeed."

That could yet see the likes of Manchester City's Adam Johnson, Aston Villa's Gabriel Agbonlahor and the Tottenham Hotspur centre-half Michael Dawson, unused in South Africa, given opportunities to impress. Capello has also earmarked Kieran Gibbs and Jack Wilshere of Arsenal, and Everton's Jack Rodwell, and will continue to monitor their development with a view to future involvement in the senior side.

The manager has emphasised during his talks with Richards that he retains the desire and enthusiasm to succeed with England despite the alarming nature of much of the side's stay in South Africa. Those close to him have stressed privately that he is keen on gaining some measure of revenge for the underachievement at the tournament.

That played its part in convincing Richards and his fellow Club England board members of the logic of retaining him, with senior figures within the FA such as David Gill and Phil Gartside having advocated a commonsense approach with no credible alternative to the Italian available, particularly once Roy Hodgson had swapped Fulham for Liverpool. Capello's right-hand man, the team's general manager, Franco Baldini, is also expected to keep his job.

"We are all still extremely disappointed at our performance in South Africa, and we believed it was important that we took some time to reflect on everything in a calm and considered manner back in England," said Richards. "After fully discussing our performance we remain convinced that Fabio is the best man for the job.

"He went into the World Cup with a reputation as one of world football's finest managers and we are confident Fabio will benefit from his first international tournament experience and this will undoubtedly make us all stronger for the Euro 2012 campaign."

www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jul/02/england-fabio-capello

[Macmoish]

Independent

Capello backed by FA to lead England team into Euro 2012

Manager 'more focused than ever' but right-hand man Baldini is now in spotlight

By Sam Wallace, Football Correspondent

The Football Association performed a major U-turn yesterday by bringing an abrupt end to its review of Fabio Capello's position as England manager with the announcement that he would continue for the Euro 2012 qualifying campaign.

Under heavy criticism that it was dithering, and with the fear that Capello could walk away if the process went on too long, the FA's main board yesterday approved a proposal that Capello continue in the position after England's 4-1 humbling by Germany. Capello will not come under any pressure to pick young players in the Euro 2012 campaign, which begins in September, and no staff changes will be enforced upon him.

The Club England body of the FA, which has held responsibility for the England team since last month, met on Thursday under the chairmanship of Sir Dave Richards. The five-person board, which includes Sir Trevor Brooking, was unanimous in its view that Capello should stay and that decision was rubber-stamped by the main FA board yesterday.

The acting chairman of the FA, Roger Burden, had earlier told Club England that the decision should be made on football grounds, not on the basis that the FA would have to pay substantial compensation to sack Capello. The likelihood that the England manager would stay has been growing since Tuesday when Phil Gartside, the Bolton Wanderers chairman, became the first FA main board member to publicly back him.

Even more crucial was the complete lack of a recognised power-structure at the FA. Even Richards, the Premier League chairman and effectively the unofficial head of the FA, was under pressure from the league to withdraw from the process. As a result, no one at the FA wanted to undertake a search for a new manager before the first Euro 2012 qualifier against Bulgaria on 3 September.

Sources claim that it would not have cost the FA £10m in compensation to sack Capello that had been widely reported. It is claimed the sum would have been more like £6m and the clause in Capello's contract that the FA deleted on the eve of the tournament did not affect the compensation payable. Instead it related to the schedule of payments to which any club who wanted to take him away from the FA would have to agree.

Once Club England had made its decision, Alex Horne, the FA's general secretary called the members of the FA main board – including Manchester United chief executive David Gill and Gartside – yesterday to seek their approval.

As The Independent reported yesterday, Richards and other FA main board members want Horne to be regarded as the public face of the decision. As the only executive member of the FA main board they thought it would look better if this was regarded as a process overseen by an exclusively FA man rather than the likes of Richards with their affiliations to other bodies.

Capello said that he was "more determined than ever to succeed with the England team". He added: "Sir Dave Richards has called me to tell me everyone at the FA wants me to continue. It is very important we use the disappointment as motivation.

"I can assure the fans I am now fully focused on our European qualifying fixtures, starting with the friendly against Hungary on 11 August. We will look to introduce new players to give the team new energy and I will use all my experience to take England forward. I am extremely proud to be the England manager, it means so much to me and I am determined to succeed."

There have been suggestions that Capello's general manager and chief aide, Franco Baldini, will step down. While that is up for consideration – and the Capello camp feel that someone has to take responsibility for the failings in South Africa – it is by no means certain. Baldini is to return to Italy and will speak to the FA when he returns.

Richards, who rarely makes public pronouncements despite occupying a powerful position within English football, maintained there had been a period of reflection though the four days was much shorter than the four weeks or so originally suggested.

Richards said: "We are all still extremely disappointed at our performance in South Africa, and we believed it was important that we took some time to reflect on everything in a calm manner back in England. After fully discussing our performance we remain convinced that Fabio is the best man for the job.

"He went into the World Cup with a reputation as one of world football's finest managers and we are confident Fabio will benefit from his first international tournament experience and this will undoubtedly make us all stronger for the Euro 2012 campaign."

Jamie Carragher has announced that he has retired from international football for the second time. He described his World Cup comeback as a "one-off" and tipped Everton midfielder Jack Rodwell as a "future England captain

www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup/capello-backed-by-fa-to-lead-england-team-into-euro-2012-2017120.html

[Macmoish]

The Italian's job: to bring in fresh blood and win back dressing room

By Sam Wallace in Port Elizabeth

When the Football Association left South Africa in a hurry on Monday evening they did so promising that Sir Dave Richards' investigation into the failings of England's 2010 World Cup campaign would take "a few weeks" at the very least to reflect on Fabio Capello's future.

"I'm not putting a time limit on it – a few weeks," said one FA official after Capello had suggested in his not-always-reliable English that he expected to be told of his fate within two weeks, thus putting the FA in a corner. They had hoped that a timeframe would not be discussed but once the Italian had mentioned it in his press conference and it was out in the open, there was no going back.

Yesterday, four days after launching their review process, the FA had come to their decision: Capello stays.

It was not exactly the exhaustive examination that the FA had promised in the immediate aftermath of the 4-1 defeat to Germany on Sunday, in fact it was nothing of the sort. The FA flight touched down in London on Monday and, recognising that the state of limbo in which they had left their manager was becoming more damaging with every day, the Club England delegation agreed to meet again on Thursday.

In the intervening days it became obvious that what the FA had intended to look like some kind of investigation – as if it was a judicial inquiry, or a murder case – just did not work in football. Instead it looked like dithering and the longer it went on, the more it undermined Capello and the greater the chance that he would lose patience and refuse to stay anyway. As for potential replacements, the FA did not have one.

That meant that by Thursday when Richards convened his Club England meeting, the board members – Sir Trevor Brooking, Adrian Bevington, Alex Horne and Michelle Farrer – had a very easy decision to make. They recommended to the main FA board that Capello stayed, got the Italian's acquiescence and did it quickly before they were hit with another two days' worth of "FA chaos" headlines.

This has not been the most glorious week in the 147-year-old history of the FA. They began it on Monday with the decision that they would take their time over the review of Capello's future – something they said that they "owed to the fans" – and they have ended it with an almighty U-turn. What have they achieved in the interim is to undermine the relationship with the manager to whom they have entrusted the England team for the next two years.

However you regard Capello and the merits of keeping him or not keeping him, the decision to put him publicly on trial and then abandon that idea and back him is a disastrous strategy. Capello has not made a success of South Africa but the aftermath of the tournament will have changed his relationship with the FA for ever.

The decision-making process is symptomatic of the lack of leadership at the FA, an organisation with no permanent, independent chairman and no chief executive. It is effectively run by Richards, the Premier League chairman, whose push for influence within the FA ended with him getting rather more influence than he bargained for. All that remains the same is their susceptibility to pressure from the media.

Having found himself the de facto head of the FA with the resignations of Lord Triesman and chief executive Ian Watmore, Richards came under pressure from the Premier League. The League's chief executive, Richard Scudamore, was concerned at the public perception that the Premier League was appointing the England manager. That is why Richards has accelerated the process and pushed forward Horne, the FA's relatively-young, newly-appointed general secretary, to be the public face of the decision.

Capello was at his home in Lugano in Switzerland yesterday, the same place that the English media tracked him down to when he first accepted the England manager's job in December 2007. He is convinced that he is better-equipped now to take on the job than he has ever been and he will need every ounce of that enthusiasm for the task that lies ahead.

There is clearly part of Capello's squad that does not want him as manager any longer. They felt he failed to react during the tournament when performances went into decline. That same group of players, who are not all connected by club affiliation or even friendship, also feel that Capello's 4-4-2 formation was outdated and that he should have played something closer to 4-5-1 to leave them less exposed. There are issues between players and members of Capello's backroom staff.

That disaffection does not represent all the players by any stretch of the imagination. Furthermore there is a valid question to be asked: who cares what the players think? Very few of the current 30-somethings will be around in four years should England qualify for Brazil in 2014 and there was a lot of talk about retirement from international football in the aftermath of defeat to Germany.

As is the case with professional footballers, none of them will want to be the first to walk away and risk miscalculating the public reaction. But the fact that Capello is staying will be a major factor for those who fell out of favour with him.

Capello mentioned Adam Johnson, Jack Wilshere and Kieran Gibbs in his last press conference on Monday but it is hard to see him cultivating a young team, especially with so few available. He is a conservative kind of manager who prefers more mature, established players. As for the next generation of English footballers, the talent in the academies of the bigger Premier League clubs has found it increasingly hard to break into senior teams.

The ticket sales for the friendly against Hungary on 11 August will be a concern, as will the worry that the crowd at Wembley will be in a mutinous frame of mind. The new stadium has been distinguished by some pretty poisonous moods in the recent past and Capello will be aware that if things go awry in the first Euro 2012 qualifiers against Bulgaria and Switzerland in September then there will be pressure on him and the embattled FA.

www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup/the-italians-job-to-bring-in-fresh-blood-and-win-back-dressing-room-2017121.html

[klr]

To call it a Farce would be to do it a grave injustice.

Never seen anything like this before, Incredible, Absolutely Incredible.

[Macmoish]

Living out the sterotype of the traditional English Farce

[Lonegunmen]

"Love thy neighbour"? (Starring Jack Smethurst as Capello)

[qpranger10]

I agree with all the above: smacks of cowardice, financial expediency and the lack of foresight we've come to expect of the League. Ok so top class managers were not exactly falling over themselves in the race to succeed Capello but so what. We should have done what Germany did when Klinsman left and offered the job to psycho. He's got the guts, the determination and has worked closely with the Under 21 squad who we are going to have to depend on for future World Cup and European cup squads, once we have dumped all the overpaid hasbeens who performed so poorly this time. Just to compensate for Stu's lack of flare I'd bring in Beckham as his assistant. We may not get immediate success but we would have built a strong foundation for 3-5 years year's time. Just as Germany did when they brought in Loew who nobody had heard of up to that point.

[saphilip]

Stuart Pearce - a flop as a club coach and you want him to run a national team with players who have egos bigger than the dressing room? And Becks, who has absolutely no coaching experience whatsoever, as his assitant?

Hell - it is clear that the whole of SAFA has decamped to the UK to spread their ideas on how to run (or rtaher how not to) a FA. And judging by the comments I have seen in the press, the TV and on various m/b's they are obviously succeeding.