Fabio Capello was reflecting on his time as England manager. Photo: Getty Images/Dan Istitene
The old people are back. responsible. Roy Hodgson and Sam Allardyce returned to the Premier League; Neil Warnock saved Huddersfield Town. And what about the most decorated seventy-year-old manager of all? Fabio Capello laughs at the mere thought: “Roy is really a little younger than me.”
Well, not that much: at 75, Hodgson, his successor as England manager, is only a year behind him. Of course, if the man no one calls the Croydon Capello can revive Crystal Palace, the real thing still has a place in the game. After all, as manager of Milan, Roma and Juventus, Capello won seven Serie A titles, added two La Ligas while in charge of Real Madrid, and lifted the Champions League trophy at the San Siro. This is a manager who knows what he is doing.
“No no no. No chance of me coming back,” he says with a smile. “Yes, sometimes they ask me. But I say no. Always. I decide it's time to stop. And I stop.” .
It's not that he's stopped speaking his mind: in a meeting with Telegraph Sport in a ridiculously posh Parisian hotel, he talks about who he thinks is the best coach, why Lionel Messi isn't the best player in the world anymore, and how he thinks. this would not have been a problem if England had appointed another foreign manager following the departure of Gareth Southgate. Although if the FA will look abroad, it will not be in his direction, he insists. Since he was fired as manager of Chinese team Jiangsu Suning in 2018, these days he prefers to spend his retirement trading fine art rather than waiting for the phone to ring.
'Messi is incredible. I always choose him over [Cristiano] Ronaldo'
His collection of mostly modernist works by Marc Chagall and Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky is valued at over £10 million. Football doesn't seem to follow him anymore. “I watch on TV, not at games,” he says. “I'm not a manager anymore.”
Capello is in Paris to take part in the Laureus World Sports Awards, which will announce Lionel Messi as World Sportsman of the Year. Appropriately, a connoisseur praising the work of a player who turned football into art.
“Messi is incredible,” he says. I always choose him over [Cristiano] Ronaldo.” Although he has a caveat. “But age is age,” he says in what seems to be a theme. “And right now [Kylian] Mbappe is the best player in the world. Mbappe has something different, he is strong, fast, scores a lot of goals. But he doesn't have the same fantasy as Messi.”
This is an intriguing observation from a manager who, in his long coaching career, has not been known to use creativity, imagination or ingenuity. The words most often applied to his approach were pragmatic, organized and disciplined. When it came to art, he usually preferred to have it hanging on his wall. His football tastes are more evident when asked if he is no longer in the game who he considers the best manager in the area.
“Carlo,” he says, referring to Carlo Ancelotti, the manager of his old club Real Madrid. “Carlo knows everything about the opponents. He is very well prepared.” And yet, despite Capello's approval, rumors persist that Ancelotti's days in Spain are numbered, that he will soon go to lead the Brazilian national team. “Carlo would like to stay in Madrid,” he says of his compatriot. “It all depends on the results of the game against Manchester City [in the Champions League semi-final]. Because I know Real Madrid: you have to win. And when you don't win, they fire you. Always.”
Carlo Ancelotti and Fabio Capello are two great managers. Photo: Getty Images/Gabriele Maltinti
If Ancelotti travels to South America, he will follow the path that Capello himself once negotiated and become the foreign coach of a football nation that considers itself more than capable of governing without outside interference. “Yes, Brazil is a completely different job,” he says of Ancelotti's planned move. “He works every day in Madrid, he talks to the players every day. Team manager? I definitely know the difference.”
Indeed he does. Although for Capello, the time spent in England was not the most prominent part of his biography. It is true that he qualified for the World Cup and the Euro, but in one tournament he lost horribly and in another he quit his job before the final. However, as the FA hints that it may again be looking overseas for Southgate's successor, he does not attribute his relative failure to being a foreigner in charge of a foreign country.
“No, that's not a problem,” he says. “Yes, it's a lot of pressure. It's difficult. We have pressure from newspapers, pressure from journalists. But it's work. An Englishman is no different from a foreigner. You understand that the national team needs the best players. When you find good players, everything becomes easier.”
If the problem wasn't his Italian worldview, as he claims, then what went wrong with him? Well, he believes, the responsible persons made mistakes. When the FA insisted he could not name his preferred captain after the player in question was accused of racist slurs against an opponent, he felt his credibility was being undermined.
“I was England manager for four years. I decided to stop after we entered the Euro because of the problem with John Terry. I said, 'If you want me to stay, John Terry will be my captain. If you want John Terry not to be captain, then I say bye bye. This is my end with England.”
Capello: Southgate is doing a great job
Also, he adds, had he not suffered an embarrassing refereeing error at Bloemfontein in the round of 16 match against Germany at the 2010 World Cup, things might have turned out very differently. “Come back,” Capello insists. “I remember [Frank] Lampard's goal. I remember it because everyone who saw it knows it was a goal, everyone knows it was a goal.”
He's right: the ball was so far behind the line that it was practically in Botswana. Although, even if Lampard's shot had remained in place, it would have meant that England lost 4-2, not 4-1. “No,” he says. “With that goal, the score was 2-2. You should know that when you recover two goals after two losses, it changes everything, we add. Who knows what will happen then. But this is football.”
Capello is convinced that if Southgate is more lucky than he is, England will have a real shot at the Euros next summer. “Yes,” he says. “Look, they have found a lot of young, new players. Good players. Southgate is doing a really good job, he has a good understanding of football. You can [win]. One thing that can stop them is that when you arrive at the end of the season, the England team arrive tired. Because of the league in England. Usually Germany reaches the top. For the [last] World Cup, every team arrives fresh because it's the middle of the season. And Germany is leaving.
He chuckles at the thought. Although not widely enough to consider returning to the game. “No, no, no,” he says. “For football, I say chao, ciao, chao.”
Fabio Capello performed at the Laureus World Sports Awards. Find out more at www.laureus.com
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