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 rends in Football/Rugby |
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| Andrew Anthony
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| Sunday 16 May 2009
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Yes, the Capello Index wasn't a good
move, but remember Glenn?
When Fabio Capello announced the launch of
the Capello Index last week, there was such a heated response from the media
that it seemed as though the England team's physio might need to be sent into
the press room with a soothing cold sponge.
The Capello Index is a
system of assessing footballers' performances that was devised by the England
coach and backed by an online gaming company. The intention was to debut the
system at next month's World Cup, which would have meant that England players
were to be publicly marked after each game according to evaluation guidelines
set by their own manager. You could see the media's point. "Do you realise what
we'd do with this information?" they implored. "Please, someone stop us!"
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Fortunately the FA, in a rare moment of
decisiveness, stepped in to kibosh the plan. It wasn't Capello's finest moment,
and certainly out of keeping with his normally shrewd, which is to say low-key,
approach to public relations. Besides which, anyone whose trousers annually
bulge with a six-million quid salary has no need to get involved, however
tangentially, with internet bookmakers.
But this was a footling misstep
by Capello when set against the elaborate pratfalls and embarrassments
committed by his predecessors. Take, for example, the fiendish psychodrama
conceived by Glenn Hoddle on the eve of the 1998 World Cup. First he included
an obviously fragile Paul Gascoigne in his squad and then, in the glare of the
world's media, ejected him from the final 22 because he was obviously fragile,
though not quite as fragile as the lampshades and flower vases on which Gazza
then proceeded to vent his frustration.
As if to confirm his gift for
man management, Hoddle then published My World Cup Story, a behind-the-scenes
account of the 1998 tournament, which essentially refashioned the holy writ of
football into a new doctrine: "What happens in the dressing room is made into a
lucrative book deal." Before Hoddle we had Graham Taylor's starring role in
that imperishable tragi-comic documentary Do I Not Like That, filmed during his
hapless and doomed campaign to qualify for the 1994 World Cup. Suffice to say
that the image of Taylor screaming "Hit it big!" is one from which the
reputation of English coaching has yet to recover. Then, of course, there was
Sven-Goran Eriksson, a man who was never shy of exploiting his England position
for commercial gain. Promoting pasta sauces, PlayStation games, classical CDs
and Sainsbury's, he was a one-man walking advertising billboard. The only
surprise was that he didn't don a sponsor-decorated jumpsuit to maximise a
marketing potential said to have been further increased by his infamous bedroom
workout regime with Ulrika Jonsson.
All things considered, then,
Capello is probably running at about 2.3 on the Catastrophe Index. He will have
to raise his game, and really lower his dignity, if he hopes to match the
record of his forebears. The other option is to do whatever the hell he likes
– just as long, that is, as he wins the Cup.
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