A Matter Of Respect

Whatever team the Don puts out it will no doubt be in the mould of previous Capello teams, hopefully this team will take the best attributes of those previous teams and put them all together in an example of effective flowing football. The attributes that are going to most please the fickle England fans will be the defensive brilliance and technical no-how of the original Capello-led Milan team, the guile and determination of the Roma that won the Scudetto and the flair and brilliance of the Beckham-inspired Real Madrid team of last season.

That brings me onto the only thing that will be wrong with what should be an all conquering debut, it will no doubt be a game that sets the country on the long and winding road of wild optimism, all the way to the 2010 World Cup Finals. However the dapper Don has forgotten one thing, one golden rule that if ignored can prove fatal for an England manager.

That rule is don't make a political scapegoat out of David Beckham; Goldenballs was dropped on the premise that he wasn't match fit, Don Fabio said that it was a decision made purely on footballing reasons. Beckham himself has defended the decision of the new man in charge saying that he knows the Italian to be a fair man who would have made his decision based on football and nothing else.

However this is pretty hard to believe when you look a little bit closer at the facts. First of all England will be playing Switzerland ranked 44th in the FIFA world rankings, even after the debacle of Steve McClaren, England are still ranked some 32 places above the Swiss.