Well, there you have it then, the four-year reign of terror of Fabio Capello is at an end, let’s all take to the streets and rejoice, right? This is not an article about Harry Redknapp and the England job, for he is such an overwhelming favourite that his eventual coronation is something of a moot point. No, this is an article that pleads for context amongst the rubbish about Fabio Capello that’s likely to be spouted in the coming days, months and years and his apparent tyrannical tenure as England boss.

Capello appears to have fallen on his sword in protest to seeing his captain, John Terry, stripped of the captaincy by the FA board. He said shortly after his shocking resignation that: “The FA insulted me and undermined my authority.” Not many managers would be content to sit by as a board stripped a player of the captaincy, no matter how odious a fellow he happens to be, and be happy to go on in their employ. A step that essentially left Capello as a lame-duck manager desperately trying to see out the final days of his contract.

The Terry decision is the right one. He cannot go to Euro 2012 as if nothing has happened, whether he is guilty or not, it sends all kinds of mixed signals and wrong messages. He should have either stepped down (something seemingly out of the realms of possibility when dealing with the Lionheart), or been stripped of it earlier on and banned from the squad. Now we are left with the inevitable half-measure of Terry going to the championships anyway, just not as captain. It’s nonsense half-measure that’s left whoever takes over in no-mans land over the issue.

After the debacle of the Steve McClaren years, where England failed, yes, you read that correctly, failed to qualify for Euro 2008, there were calls for more order to be brought to the ranks.

The job eventually went to Fabio Capello, a manager with a truly glittering CV that included seven Serie A titles with the likes of Juventus, AC Milan and Roma, two La Liga titles with Real Madrid and a Champions League triumph with Milan. A world-class manager in every single respect and someone not afraid to crack the whip.

After the McClaren reign, during which he cringeworthingly referred to players by their nicknames in press conferences, Capello was brought in to restore order, professionalise the ranks and exert his influence over an underperforming squad.

But here is where the problem enters – he cracked the whip so hard, that he forgot to involve the media in every step of his decision-making like McClaren did. He barred them from the training ground, rather unreasonably requesting that the players focus on, you know, actually training rather than showing off for the cameras and doing interviews.

He was criticised for telling the delicate souls in the dressing room who was going to be starting just a mere hour before kick-off – a practice that is designed to mentally focus every single player in the squad. A tactic that Capello has used throughout his career to great success and is common place in clubs all over the world. But not here, oh no, not with our brave boys, they need a bit more time to adjust to being told to go out and do their jobs.

This lack of access makes finding interesting copy terribly difficult to come by for most reporters you see, so the majority took to throwing giant rocks at Capello in the manner of a child forced to stay indoors while all his friends were outside playing. And if the England job has taught us one thing in recent years, it’s that much like the captaincy now, it’s essentially as much an ambassadorial role now mixed in with a bit of PR as it is to do with coaching and selecting a team.

To put it into perspective – Capello negotiated England to two successive unbeaten qualifying campaigns with a squad that had failed to qualify for the previous international torunament. He boasts the highest win percentage of any England manager in history at 66% and lost just two competitive games.

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The main criticism levelled at Capello is that he failed to get the best out of a talented England side. For those of you that still believe this current squad to be anything even approaching ‘talented’, you seriously need your head re-examining.

As far as I can work out, he’s being blamed solely for not making a group of overhyped and underperforming players overcome generations worth of  poor coaching and technical defaults in a short four-year spell. Shame on you Fabio for not teaching old dogs new tricks in the 20-odd days a year that you get to spend with them.

Capello is regarded as a world-class manager all over the world, everywhere it seems, except here. There has been a clamour for an English manager for quite some time now, with the media agenda carrying a fairly sickening xenophobic tone to it.

Mike Ingham of BBC 5 Live had this to say immediately after the resignation: “Isn’t it symbolic that he made his comments about John Terry in Italian? Looking back, the fans have found it difficult to relate to him and they have been tense and joyless years.” Before going onto offer: “My problem with Capello is that he never embraced our footballing culture.” What exactly is our footballing culture? Mollycoddling semi-talented footballers to the extent that they become excuse-making cry babies. is not a definable culture.

Neil Warnock had this to say: “He brings humour to the dressing room and that has been missing in Fabio’s time and in Sven-Goran Eriksson’s time too.” Whereas the monosyllabic Alan Shearer stated: “England should be managed by an Englishman.”

So instead of getting in the best man for the job regardless of his nationality, according to Mike Ingham,Neil Warnock and Alan Shearer we need a joyful comedian, but an english one. This apparent ‘golden generation’ is a fallacy. No manager in the world would have made England world beaters, they simply aren’t good enough. The playing field had clearly been changed, the media no longer wanted what they once called for in an England manager; all of the qualities Capello brought to the job were now obsolete, he wasn’t playing along after all.

The irony behind all of this, of course, is that if Jose Mourinho were to leave his job tomorrow at Real Madrid and suddenly become available, the clamour for an English manager would surely die down. He’s a headline-helping, quotable manager if ever there was one, and Redknapp would soon find himself out of the running, so save me this whole ‘an english manager for the english’ shtick, it’s just so patently hypocritical.

Capello has brought in a whole raft of young players ranging from Kyle Walker to Jack Wilshere to Joe Hart and made them regulars. If an Englishman had Capello’s record they would lauded for such achievement. But not Fabio, though, oh no, because he’s one of those jonny foreign sorts isn’t he.

In the interests of balance, though, I think that it’s fair to say that Capello has at least made some rather large mistakes. I’ll just list them so as to not appear unbiased – appointing John Terry as captain, leaving Scott Parker at home during WC 2010, starting both Robert Green and David James instead of Joe Hart at WC 2010, the Capello Index, the bundling of a last-ditch attempt to coax Paul Scholes out of international retirement, his handling of David Beckham’s international future, the re-appointment of John Terry as England captain.

He is not faultless, far from it, but he is immensely qualified and most importantly, widely respected in the footballing world, particularly among the players. He commands respect from everyone except journalists, who repugnantly take to creating pressure where there is none, driving wedges where none exist and question his committment, passion and decisions at every turn, always with the added help of hindsight.

In short, the press wants Redknapp as manager not just because he’s done a good job at Spurs, but just as much because he’s a rent-a-quote who enjoys a great rapport with them. Capello has and will never bow down to playing the media game, and that more than anything appears to have cost him his job.

Somewhat prophetically back in 2007 while Real Madrid manager, Capello offererd two kernels of wisdom most managers worth their salt abide by and two instances why his relationship with the British press and ultimately the England job was always doomed to failure. “I can’t stand the crap that gets talked by everyone: players, fans, the media, club officials,” and “why should I waste my time listening to people who are clearly less intelligent than me?”

Call it arrogance, call it self-serving, but Capello has been undermined at every turn and hounded out of a job that he clearly just didn’t want anymore. Hamstrung by his nationality, brutally undermined and let down on the pitch, it’s reactionary hysteria of the worst kind. He wasn’t perfect, far from it, but the rationale that he’s rubbish simply because he failed to make a rubbish team not as rubbish is both flawed and illogical.

Now it looks as if the media’s choice of England manager, Harry Redknapp, will finally get his chance. They’ve managed to get what they always wanted. After branding McClaren clueless, Keegan tactically inept and Eriksson passionless, England have just let a manager resign who is the antithesis of every single one of these attributes. Good luck Harry, something tells me that you’re going to need it.

You can follow me on Twitter @JamesMcManus1

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