Why Capello is just like Wembley: an expensive and unwanted cost on the FA balance sheet

By Michael Calvin

Published 23:02 07/08/10

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Roll up, roll up. Fabio’s Freak Show is about to hit town.

GASP at the empty seats in Foster’s Folly, the National Stadium in no-man’s land.

GAWP at incompetent, ­incontinent multi-millionaire footballers.

GROAN at happy smiley people from Club England, who insist the future is bright.

Sorry chaps. You are ­sleepwalking through your worst nightmare.

At best, the friendly against Hungary will be a ­demeaning damage-limitation exercise.

At worst it will be a fiasco, confirmation that football fatigue has set in.

The sense of disaffection is overpowering, the scent of desperation oppressive.

Wednesday’s match has the look of a watershed ­occasion, a critical test of faith.

Fabio Capello has no ­sympathy, no credibility, no moral authority. No chance of restoring his reputation.

Like Wembley itself, he’s an unwanted cost on the FA balance sheet.

His players – ooh, how they hate guilt by association – are on the proverbial hiding to nothing.

They are quietly dreading the ordeal of fronting up, ­facing the mood music.

The game that has ­enriched them beyond reason is being battered by a perfect storm of anger, boredom and ­mistrust.

The new season is as ­welcome as a cold caller, peddling retirement plans for the terminally dim.

The World Cup was an ­indictment of modern ­football, rather than a ­celebration of its status.

We’ve had no time to ­rationalise England’s ­irrelevance, no time to ­recalibrate.

You can have too much of a good thing.

Not so long ago, opening day was a time of ritual and renewal. Now it is barely a punctuation mark in the ­narrative of eternal winter.

The Golden Goose has been strangled and stuffed, all in Skytastic High ­Definition.

Liverpool were playing European football within 18 days of the World Cup Final.The only saving grace was the diversion it provided from unconvincing businessmen reinventing themselves as saviours.

Transfer sagas, as ­nauseatingly overblown as Victorian melodrama, rolled on 24/7.

If Cesc Fabregas dares kiss the Arsenal badge he should be smothered in honey and compelled to wear a beehive as a beanie hat.

Perspective was hard to find when the High Court ­allowed Portsmouth to ­survive at the expense of its neediest creditors.

Sam Allardyce berated the Prime Minister for the ­impact of punitive tax rates on his recruitment strategy for ­second-rate foreign scufflers.

And Richard Scudamore put himself ­forward as a cross between Mother ­Theresa and John Maynard Keynes.

The Premier League, pure in spirit and light of heart, has entered discussions with the government to set up its own schools.

It’s enough to make you pine for the good old days when boys were sent up chimneys.

Scudamore, like any good businessman, has spotted the gap in the market.

FA Councillors could not be trusted to run a whelk stall.

He could do without his chairman, Sir Dave Richards, struggling to avoid being taken to court by one of his own clubs, Fulham.

But the Premier League is quietly expanding its power base. Its director of youth, one Ged Roddy, has come up with a simple plan for producing future England stars.

As befits a deeply ­unimpressive refugee from academia, he took nine months to discover we don’t practise enough.

Eureka.

Every Sports Science ­student knows it takes 10,000 hours of practice to make a learned skill ­automatic. Any youth coach will ­confirm that the ­education system has stopped ­producing physically literate youngsters.

Capello could not care less. He’s working his notice. His successor will be ­British, media-friendly, and have the morals of a country curate.

I wouldn’t have his job for the world.

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