EXCLUSIVE: We can win it with Capello says ex-FA chief

For a former chief executive of the FA, Brian Barwick has a decent sense of humour.

He's a lifelong Liverpool fan, but one of the pictures that has pride of place on his office wall is of him shaking hands with Gary Neville.

And his recollection of the time when Steve McClaren wandered onto the Wembley touchline during the crunch Euro 2008 qualifier against Croatia sheltering under an umbrella is as dry as it gets, too.

“I turned to the person sitting next to me and said ‘If we win, the headlines will be Singing In The Rain,” Barwick remembered. “If we lose, that will be an image that will be difficult.”

England, of course, lost the game when a draw would have ensured qualification and McClaren was sacked the next day.

Soon after, in December 2007, Barwick appointed Fabio Capello, and for a while it seemed like an inspired move.

But that’s where the comedy stops.

Barwick left the FA at the end of 2008 and, as a fan, watched aghast in South Africa last summer as Capello’s England slid to a humiliating exit.

That’s one of the reasons, perhaps, why his enthralling new book Anfield Days And Wembley Ways concentrates more on his devoted support for his club than his time with the FA.

Despite Capello’s World Cup failure, though, Barwick, who now runs his own successful media consultancy firm, believes the Italian remains the man for the job.

And as England head home from their 3-0 win in Bulgaria to prepare for Wales' visit to Wembley on Tuesday, the FA’s former boss remains convinced the manager he appointed can lead the nation to glory.

“Fabio’s first task was settling into the job and creating the momentum for qualifying for the World Cup,” said Barwick.

“My last game as FA chief executive was the 4-1 win against Croatia in Zagreb [in September 2008], and that was probably my most satisfying moment in the job.

“We had suffered the indignity of not qualifying for the Euros by losing to Croatia and on the way back from Zagreb we had champagne and Fabio said, ‘I dedicate that victory to you, Brian.’

“But our performance at the World Cup was abject. I went with my son to the first game in Rustenburg - the players' shoulders went down when we conceded that goal to the USA.

“I watched the Algeria game on television and I can’t remember a match leaving me so non-plussed.

"Then again, if Frank Lampard’s goal had been allowed against Germany [which would have made the score 2-2 just before halftime], I think we would have gone through - and who knows what would have happened then?

“The next phase for Fabio was to dust yourself down and make a go of it. He had lost some public support and some media support, and he knew that.

“But he got us to South Africa in some style and now he and the team have picked themselves up.

"Qualifying for the Euros is a must and then let’s have a real go at the European Championship. I think both he and the team are capable of contending.

“Did I feel any responsibility for what happened in South Africa? Some. When we appointed Fabio, the job was to get through the group. We got through the group.

“If we had won the World Cup, would I have felt any sense of ownership of that? To a degree, I would. I was proud of appointing him but that feeling grows less the more distance there is between me and the job. I have not been involved for a long time now.

“I see him far less regularly than I did, obviously. We had not known each other long enough to have built a friendship. I wish him well. I feel an element of responsibility. I want it to work.”

Barwick has a huge collection of Liverpool programmes, including one from the club’s very first game against Rotherham Town at Anfield on September 1, 1892, which he keeps safe in a bank vault.

He is a trusted friend of the club and is proud to have been there for all their European Cup Final victories, but admits that the power of the clubs is an impediment to the progress of the England team.

“We have a fantastic domestic league that is the envy of the world,” Barwick said, “but we are expected to turn out an England team that will beat the rest of the world and it is very difficult for those objectives to be realised.

“Somehow, the game has to find a way for clubs and England to be successful. More and more fans are heavily club-orientated. It is because some of the clubs have become melting pots and some of the best players are foreign players.

“A lot of our league is built on strength and speed, and international football is not necessarily played the same way.”

Barwick has also heard the clamour for the next England manager to be English, a demand that has grown amid the disillusionment felt toward Capello after the World Cup.

“People say it should be an English guy, but Fabio replaced an English guy,” said Barwick, who also appointed McClaren to succeed Sven Goran Eriksson in 2006. “We need to get the right English guy at the right time.

“You cannot pick an England manager just because he has won seven Premier League games on the bounce. You need to get the right candidate irrespective of nationality.”

That task, when Capello leaves after Euro 2012, will fall to someone other than Barwick.

But if the Italian leads England to glory in Poland and Ukraine, a small slice of the credit will go to the Scouser who appointed him.