Source: Daily_Mail
MARTIN SAMUEL: What HAS Capello got to learn from Wenger, Fergie, Hodgson and Moyes?
A letter to Fabio Capello from the League Managers' Association has been received and is in the system, according to the Football Association. It is to be hoped it will remain there for some time.[LNB] Processing its contents is hardly a matter of urgency anyway. They are well known. Capello is invited to a think tank of League managers, with the aim of improving his England team. He is to be granted, according to LMA chief executive Richard Bevan, 'access to the immense knowledge' of a select band of British coaches.[LNB] Patronised: LMA letter was an insult to Capello[LNB] Reviewing the list, to a man they are notable for either having been less successful than Capello at their clubs, disastrous in international football or stand in his shadow to an extent that the very idea he would be seeking them out, rather than the other way around, is surreal.[LNB] The impression given is that Capello is a lame duck in need of rescue, and the LMA are gallantly offering to assist. At the very least the timing is clumsy and insulting, at worst it is a ham-fisted attempt to capitalise on Capello's perceived weakness and further undermine him to advance the case for an English manager.[LNB] Unsurprisingly, Capello is not intending to place meeting this brains trust at the top of his priorities. Even so, it further explains why the England manager is increasingly developing a siege mentality.[LNB] [LNB] More from Martin Samuel... Martin Samuel: At last a team that looks like England... what's changed?04/09/10 Martin Samuel: Storm is raging, but all Taunton wants is cold ale and sun02/09/10 MARTIN SAMUEL: A poor excuse for this descent into corruption 02/09/10 Martin Samuel: Show respect - Fabio Capello is no clown31/08/10 Martin Samuel: Do we have the appetite for Pakistan to remain? 29/08/10 MARTIN SAMUEL: It's black and white why not to award Russia 201829/08/10 MARTIN SAMUEL: Hate groups? They're a sure sign of madness27/08/10 MARTIN SAMUEL: Why Spurs are loath to fund Redknapp's grand designs24/08/10 VIEW FULL ARCHIVE Bevan has already revealed the sensei available to Capello. The list includes Arsene Wenger (who, unlike Capello, has never won the Champions League and has collected four League titles to Capello's seven), Sir Alex Ferguson (who managed Scotland for 10 games between September 1985 and June 1986, winning three), Roy Hodgson (who has never won a prize in a major European league and whose last trophy was the Danish title in 2001) and David Moyes (Division Two champion with Preston North End, season 1999-2000).[LNB] All are respected figures, for many reasons, but so is Capello, one of the most successful and admired managers of the modern era. Instead, Bevan makes him sound like a lucky prize-winner or an excitable fan queuing up to meet his heroes. It gets worse.[LNB] 'We want to work closely with England,' says Bevan, 'and these guys know what they are doing.' And Capello doesn't? Capello needs to go to Moyes for tips? Has Bevan noticed Everton's League position lately? Moyes has enough on his plate turning this season around, without dispensing advice on how to run the England team.[LNB] One might even speculate that Moyes might be the one in need of pointers from Capello. Hodgson has a creditable record as an international manager, but dealt with considerably lower expectations than Capello. Hodgson's greatest achievement came at the 1994 World Cup with Switzerland, when he earned widespread praise for reaching the last 16. Replicating that with England in South Africa, Capello was asked if he would resign.[LNB]There's more. 'One manager said to me that if England want to win a World Cup they need a club mentality,' added Bevan. 'The England manager has to understand how club players tick.'[LNB] And where are these mythical club players? Do the LMA grow them on farms, or would they be the same specimens Capello coached to consistent success at AC Milan, Roma and Real Madrid? The man has been out of club football for only a handful of seasons, for heaven's sake. He lost one big game to Germany. He hasn't developed Alzheimer's.[LNB] Capello has been confronted with some rare old nonsense since returning from South Africa, but the LMA have opened a new frontier. The arrogance in the presumption that he must go to the seniors for guidance like a little lost boy on his first day at big school is an even bigger insult than the newspaper donkey ears.[LNB] Those outside the game are prone to extreme reactions in difficult times, but the LMA are Capello's professional allies. They should understand, not diminish his reputation further. The England manager cannot become distracted by this but he is entitled to be irritated. The managers whose knowledge is being touted should also rest uneasy at what is being done in their name.[LNB] Capello watches matches, he attends football gatherings, some hosted by the LMA. He meets managers all the time and will talk football with them as always. No doubt he asks their opinions, maybe even invites input on specific topics, not least the form of individuals at their clubs.[LNB] Yet, to formalise the process, worse, to make it sound as if Capello cannot cope without handing England to a committee, is patronising in the extreme. For now, the LMA's letter remains in the pending tray awaiting Capello's reply. He may be minded to borrow a line from Duke Ellington.[LNB] 'Do nothing till you hear from me,' the song goes. 'And you never will.'[LNB] England 's footballers watched a tape of the World Cup defeat against Germany to prepare them for the demands of the new campaign. It has subsequently been reported that central defender Matthew Upson was angry at being left out of the match against Bulgaria. Did he sleep through it? [LNB] A dash of wisdom for likes of WayneWhether the complexities of Wayne Rooney's personal life affected his performances at the World Cup in South Africa, we will never know. I doubt it. If he was distracted by the impact sordid revelations about liaisons with prostitutes would have on his marriage, he would surely have had a poor game against Bulgaria on Friday night: and he turned in his best performance since getting injured last March.[LNB] Rooney (right) has done his little dance with the celebrity magazines, and his wife Coleen is very much part of that brand. This is what makes him fair game when their product turns out to be contaminated by doses of a £1,200-a-night prostitute. Footballers should know the pitfalls before they so eagerly embrace the celebrity circuit, projecting marital bliss for personal gain.[LNB] There will be the standard sermons but, on matters of fidelity, Rooney answers to his wife, alone. However a valid - and prescient - point about British attitudes to young sportsmen was made by Usain Bolt, the world sprint champion last week. I couldn't put it better myself. 'You guys set them up by saying they've got to get married early.[LNB] That's the English way. But you're not ready to settle down, and that's where all the girlfriends come in and all the problems. You do not want to get married at 22, especially if you're famous, because girls are going to be throwing themselves at you. I wouldn't get married now. It would be awful. Wayne Rooney's the same age as me - he's married and has got a kid. I don't think these guys are ready to get married yet. There's less stress on me. If someone says, ''I saw Usain out with a girl last night'', whatever, because I'm not married.'[LNB]And while we're at it There are those who feel Mohammad Aamer, the teenage Pakistan fast bowler accused of spot fixing, would not deserve clemency if found guilty, despite his age. No exceptions, they say, cheating is cheating. He should be banned for life, like the rest of them. So what of Wendy Chapman, the doctor who deliberately cut Tom Williams, the Harlequins winger, for her part in the Bloodgate scandal? [LNB]Last week, the General Medical Council took the generous decision to let Chapman continue practising. She had been widely painted as the victim put in an intolerable position by the pressure of rugby's boys' club culture. Yet, Chapman is a professional and her work at Harlequins was only part-time. [LNB]She had nothing to lose by refusing to engage in a corrupt act or, better still, by exposing it. If a doctor could be cowed by the power of the dressing room, what chance would Aamer have if senior players were issuing the invitations to join them on the dark side. [LNB]Windows? It just froze againThe computer packed up. Of course it did. We've all been there. Last year, when Manchester United played Bayern Munich, the network went down and most of the Press corps ended up filing their reports through the laptop of one reporter, whose equipment stayed inexplicably immune. And don't get me started on the San Siro. You've got more chance of taking a call from a Chilean copper mine than one from Milan at full-time.[LNB] So journalists understand the vagaries of modern technology, particularly when faced with deadlines. The point is: our work still got done. A way around the problems was found. And that is where Tottenham Hotspur's deal for Rafael van der Vaart (right) becomes contentious. A three-man Premier League committee accepted the lateness of his registration due to computer error and allowed the signing, but these glitches happen too often for comfort.[LNB] Andrey Arshavin's transfer to Arsenal and Jermain Defoe's move to Portsmouth were lastminute fiascos, too. Benjani came late to Sunderland because a fax machine packed up. And when these breakdowns occur, nobody ever thinks to nip down the road to the newsagents and pay £1 per sheet instead.[LNB] Nobody remembers his PA's brother with the plumbing business round the corner, who could send it all across on his Apple Mac. Nobody thinks with the wit of a normal person and resolves the problem by unconventional means. And because the Premier League are facilitators, not regulators, they make it work and wave it through and each transfer window is more chaotic and lawless than the last.[LNB] It used to be young policemen who made you feel old; now it's the prospective owners of football clubs. Tom Lever is a 21-year-old student who appeared on the MTV reality show Living on the Edge. He claims to be in negotiations to buy Portsmouth, who are about as on the edge as it is possible to be without falling into the Solent. Lever says he has offered the club's de facto owner Balram Chainrai £16.2million to take control, despite holding a single directorship in a shell company called Portsmouth FC 2010 LLP, founded to handle the deal. Lever says he will launch a leveraged takeover, with the money borrowed against Portsmouth's main asset, Fratton Park. As they say so regularly on the south coast, what could possibly go wrong?[LNB] Callum Priestley, Britain's 60 metres hurdles champion, has tested positive for clenbuterol, an anabolic agent, and has been banned for two years. And whose fault is this? South African farmers, apparently.[LNB] Priestley is claiming the drug entered his system during a training camp in Stellenbosch last January, as a result of local livestock producers flouting a worldwide ban on clenbuterol as a means of promoting animal growth. There is only one problem with his defence; despite spending thousands on it, Priestley has not a scrap of proof.[LNB] 'UK Athletics should have been on my side, but they let me go easily,' said Priestley, who can never represent Britain in the Olympics as a result of his punishment. 'I was guilty until proven innocent.'[LNB] No, Priestley was innocent until he failed the drugs test, then he was proven guilty, and, as he is yet to offer any explanation the testers find plausible or evidence beyond halfbaked theories about Yarpie cattle, guilty he remains. It just goes to show, you don't have to work on a farm to be up to your neck in bulls***.[LNB] Since sacking Alan Pardew at Southampton, chief executive Nicola Cortese, his trusty match predictor and caretaker manager Dean Wilkins have masterminded a 3-0 elimination to Swindon Town in the Johnstone's Paint Trophy (the competition Southampton won under Pardew last season), plus an impressive 2-0 home defeat to Rochdale. There is a long way to go this season but, short term, we shall place this one in a temporary file marked 'Not So Clever Now, Are We?'[LNB] Ukraine was always a controversial venue for the 2012 European Championships. Now the promised £7.5billion budget to improve infrastructure has been cut to £5.8bn, affecting transport throughout the country, which is already limited. It is not too late for UEFA to hand the majority of fixtures over to Ukraine's co-hosts, Poland, and head off the chaos. But it soon will be.[LNB] Sol Campbell could not be fit for Newcastle United's first game of the season because, as he explained angrily, he had just returned from honeymoon. Now he is ready, raring to go and talking about winning back his England place. Newcastle's first game of the season that Campbell missed? Manchester United (away). Newcastle's next game, that Campbell is available to play? Blackpool (home). [LNB] [LNB]
