Not being an Englishman, Fabio Capello is charmingly unaware that he is doing an impossible job. His last match being a 4-1 victory over a country that had never lost a competitive game at home, and his next one being a 90,000 sell-out against a team ranked lower than Burundi, he may find the news more surprising than Wayne Rooney’s latest haircut. Capello said his eyes widened when he saw Rooney this week, freshly shorn like a character in a book by Richard Allen, and he would no doubt be equally bemused by the theory that all England managers are doomed to fail, victims of forces beyond their control.

Admittedly, these hypotheses are usually the work of former England managers such as Graham Taylor, Glenn Hoddle and Sven-Göran Eriksson, whose failures were very much within their control and who have subsequently cornered the market in lame excuses to divert from their professional shortcomings. Talk of an impossible job is a myth, but repeated frequently enough it is one that has gained undeserved credibility, becoming a profitable cottage industry for previous managers who were not up to snuff.

Taylor’s self-serving documentary on the subject, which aired this week, wasted no time on his lousy team selection or poor tactics, but went straight for a predictable list of bogeymen, mainly the media, club managers and the influence of the Premier League. Hoddle, when interviewed, did not mention that his bizarre interpretations of Eastern philosophies, coupled with a published diary that broke dressing-room confidences, had made him a deeply unpopular figure with several of England’s senior players before he was dismissed midway through a stuttering campaign. Eriksson, meanwhile, bemoaned the attention of paparazzi, but neglected to explain the attraction for their camera lenses, namely a public affair with a very high-profile television personality, Ulrika Jonsson, whom he pulled at a private party thrown by a noted newspaper proprietor cum pornography baron, Richard Desmond.

Nice.

Capello, having wasted little time on Swedish weathergirls or CD compilations of his favourite classical music, has not found his private life under the same scrutiny as Eriksson’s. And as his backroom staff tends to consist of granite-faced Italian fitness instructors rather than faithhealing housewives from Berkshire who claim to have put invisible force fields over the goals at the Olympic Stadium in Rome, he has avoided much of the ridicule that came Hoddle’s way, too. As for Taylor, the repeat screening of the fly-on-the-wall documentary covering his failed World Cup qualifying campaign revealed much of why he found the job impossible, although self-awareness was never his strength.

So it is to be hoped that Capello is about to blow this whole sorry culture out of the water, if he has not done so already, by showing what can be achieved if a gifted coach, organiser and motivator stays focused on one goal. The victory in Zagreb was the work of a manager who put in the hours on the training field, conveyed a clear, practical message to his players and eschewed gimmicks or the easy, populist decisions. When Capello talks of the difficulties of the England job, he does not create diversionary spooks, but focuses on straightforward football problems, such as time with the team and the differences between sportsmen in England and Italy. He sounds like a grown-up, above the squawk of childish tantrums.

“It is different being the manager of the national team because at a club, you work every day, you train every day, you can speak to the players every day, it is easy,” he said. “If something is a mistake, you can make a quick change, do it the right way. As England manager, that is harder. Also, for me, there is a different style, a different mentality, but this is what makes it a fantastic experience, not, I hope, an impossible job. The pressure is big when you are the manager of Milan, too, but then it is only one city and the fans of that club. Here it is a nation, so that is more important. But the journalists are the same in Italy and Spain, what is different is that the England team concerns everybody.”

“So we are not the worst?” asked a red-top inquisitor, almost crestfallen. “No, you personally — you are the worst,” Capello deadpanned, and then burst out laughing.

Managing England has its pressures and we all accept this. Yet Capello knows that the pressure is linked, without complication, to winning and losing. His players began this campaign under negative scrutiny after failure to qualify for the finals of the European Championship this summer and now back-to-back wins, including a first for a team visiting Zagreb for a competitive game, has elevated the mood at Wembley this afternoon to one of expectation, not exasperation. Before the last game, Capello said that England were happier playing away from home to escape the frustration of the Wembley crowd, now he thinks there is more understanding of how tricky it can be to break down a team that plays without ambition to win.

“I remember the old Wembley atmosphere, the crowd helping the team,” he said. “That is how I want it to be again. We have changed a lot of things in the minds of the fans with what happened in Croatia, and we hope to follow that up. When I first came to England, the mentality of the players was to play with fear. This was the worst thing about the team. Now I look at the players and I see confidence again.”

Capello’s mantra this week has been attacking movement and to this end he is likely to set up the side against Kazakhstan with Steven Gerrard to the right of Gareth Barry and Frank Lampard to the left, while Wayne Rooney and Theo Walcott cut inside from wide positions to support Emile Heskey.

The talk around the camp has been of 4-3-3, although Capello tends to interpret these game plans differently. His aim all week has been to accommodate England’s match-winning forwards and midfield players in one team, and he has achieved that. Now he must beat the 131st best team in the world. At home. No offence, but hardly impossible, is it?

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