The defining characteristic of Fabio Capello's glittering club managerial career has been his certainty. It is what we wanted in an England head coach after the Steve McClaren interim, when the Yorkshireman seemed to bend in the wind of concerted criticism and second guess what the media wanted, changing his team and tactics so frequently that his strategy drifted towards incoherence. So, it was disconcerting to hear the Italian state this week: "I don't know what we have to do to improve the minds of the players."
As he continued his act of penitence by summoning the furies of the Wembley crowd to rain down on the surviving World Cup players and himself tonight, the consensus among the experts is that he can survive the loss of the supporters' confidence but the key to preserving his employer's faith is by maintaining the trust of his squad. Indeed his initial diagnosis of the cause of England's travails, the players' exhaustion, though valid, appears to have been sugar-coated for precisely that audience, but his later pronouncements on technical flaws and insufficient mental rigour may fall on stonier ground in the dressing room.
No one likes being called mentally weak and if the players are offended by the coach's verdict, the whispers coming out of the camp at Rustenburg two months ago will increase in volume in all manner of off-the-record hints and steers. Capello has only to delve into his past, however, to show that he has weathered this kind of storm before.
In the autumn before he led Roma to the Serie A title in 2001, some of the club's ultras invaded the Trigoria training headquarters in protest at poor results and performances, jostling the players and shattering the windscreens of their cars. Vincenzo Montella was openly scathing about the manager yet Capello refused to be cowed by the hostility of volatile fans and a senior player. He kept his nerve and delivered Roma's first championship for 18 years.
Seven years before that, he enjoyed his greatest triumph as a coach when his Milan side destroyed Johan Cruyff's Barcelona "Dream Team" 4-0 to win the European Cup in Athens. If Capello wants to remind his England players that he has the Midas touch, or to show them the meaning of mental fortitude, he could not do much better than show them the video of that game together with an explanation of how he outthought a Barça team packed with fluidity and flair.
Milan were worthy Italian champions that year, conceding only 15 goals thanks to the introduction of Marcel Desailly as a midfield shield in front of an impeccable back four made up of Mauro Tassotti, Alessandro Costacurta, Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini. With Marco van Basten sidelined and a counter-attacking style built around the pacy and agile Daniele Massaro, they only managed to score 36 goals, however, and never did so more than twice in a league match.
In an anomaly of the early days of the Champions League, the semi-finals that year were restricted to one-leg affairs and when both Baresi and Costacurta picked up suspensions against Arsène Wenger's Monaco, Barcelona were installed as overwhelming favourites for the final with blithe predictions of the pain Romario and Hristo Stoichkov were likely to inflict on an improvised backline. Drafting in Filippo Galli, later a figure of consternation for Watford fans, and a young Christian Panucci, Capello tore up his successful blueprint and told his team to attack.
With Dejan Savicevic in fine form they tore Barcelona to shreds and the nimble Montenegrin set up Massaro's opening goal then scored the third with a lob. Roberto Donadoni brilliantly teed-up Massaro's second, but the crowning glory was Milan's fourth goal, the culmination of Desailly's intelligent run, deft dip of the shoulder to open the angle and majestic curling shot.
Those who had given Milan any hope before the game thought their only approach, banking on a belief that Capello's instincts were ineradicably conservative, would be to do to Barcelona what Internazionale did to the Catalans in this year's semi-final. Instead, he did what was least expected – stole Barça's clothes and beat them at their own game. Little wonder Cruyff looked wholly bemused at the final whistle, so did the rest of us.
Capello achieved it without two of his best players and demonstrated that far from being a one-dimensional disciplinarian wedded to tactical orthodoxy, he was open to new ideas developed by himself. Boldness during his finest hour was proof that he can change. Now it's up to the England players to come out of the bunker and show that they can, too.
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