The FA have served up a piping-hot opportunity but so many people are excusing themselves from the dinner table that it looks like the only man left who fits the FA’s four-point checklist (a pulse, experience, a desire to actually take the job, name isn’t ‘Terry Venables’) is Italian Fabio Capello.
Capello told The Sun:
“I am willing to negotiate to take the England job. It would be an interesting challenge — and difficult challenges fascinate me. I am sure all managers and coaches would welcome the chance of leading England, particularly, most of all, to take on such a difficult challenge — given that England haven’t won a trophy for so many years. I cannot understand how a national side which in the past and at present comprises so many great and very great players, has not won anything since 1966.”
Which is a darn sight better than some of the negative grunts coming out of other managers’ mouths; O’Neill, Allardyce, Wenger and Curbishley. However, The Times reckons that not only would Capello be the oldest man appointed to the job (61) but that the Italian’s pidgin English will have to be boosted by having a translator follow him around, and that isn’t going to look very good at all, is it?