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Sunday December 16, 1:58 PMCapello appointment gets England talking
Britain's Sunday newspapers sought to shed light on the man who will take on what the former partner of the second-to-last incumbent called the country's third most important job. "After the monarchy and the prime minister, being the England coach is the most important job in the country," Sven-Goran Eriksson's glamorous ex Nancy Dell'Ollio told The Observer newspaper. Dell-Ollio, almost as much in the limelight as Eriksson, offered advice to her fellow countryman, telling Capello to expect inclement weather, a surprisingly warm welcome but a tough time from the British press. "People in England are much more obsessed with football than in Italy. It's like a religion and that produces incredible pressure on the England manager," she said. "The Impossible Job they call it, and you have to take everything which goes with that." But the author and academic Germaine Greer warned success-starved England fans that Capello might not be all they expect, using a vocabulary rarely, if ever, heard on the terraces. "The English like to think that Italian men are volatile, fiery and impulsive; in reality they are more likely to be stolid, pernickety and valetudinarian," she wrote in the Independent on Sunday. "Capello looks like the kind of Italian man who takes out a clean handkerchief and dusts a seat before he sits on it," she added. She wished the 61-year-old manager luck but warned that, like making proper pasta, pizza or a cappuccino, "the best of Italian cannot survive transplantation to England". Valetudinarian concerns from Australian feminists aside, reports suggested Capello was made of strong stuff: a strict disciplinarian who has no truck with prima donnas and under-achievement. "Tough, ruthless, fearless and famously grumpy... hard as nails," said The Observer in one of many profiles alongside musings on the merits of appointing yet another foreign coach and its implications for the English game. Elsewhere, much was made of his 100 percent title-winning record as manager of AC Milan, Juventus, AS Roma and Real Madrid -- potentially setting up Capello for a fall if he fails to continue that streak with England. Others speculated on which players are likely to find favour. Former England captain David Beckham, who played under Capello at Real Madrid, was widely tipped for a return, a game shy of his 100th cap. Capello's imminent arrival also made it into the news pages, notably because of his contrasting off-field persona as a lover of fine art, philosophy and art-house films. "Forget 4-4-2, lads -- let's talk Kandinsky" The Sunday Times said, in a reference to the Russian expressionist and abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky, some of whose work Capello is said to own. "There has always been a suspicion that England's footballers think Vincent Van Gogh plays midfield for PSV Eindhoven. But that's all about to change as Fabio Capello takes control of the national team," the article said. With a 4.8-million-pound (6.7-million-euro, 9.7-million-dollar) a year deal, pre-tax, he could add to his 10-million-pound art collection, the newspaper said. There was also wild accounting about Capello's total financial package but most newspapers were agreed he would net five million pounds if he helps England win the World Cup -- alongside English footballing immortality. |
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