Marcello Lippi Is Not Worried About Making English Friends

By: chris | May 1st, 2008

Marcello Lippi has earned a ton of respect in the last decade, with a trophy cabinet enough to make any coach blush. When Lippi speaks, people listen. One of the few coaches to be worthy of sitting at the same table is another Italian in Fabio Capello, now the coach of the English national team (I don’t know if you’ve heard). So Don Fabio has the unenviable task of turning around the Three Lions, and Lippi seems to think its a mountain climb at best. Because the EPL has “only a few good players” Capello can choose from.

Well that’s not going to endear him to English fans.

For all the controversy surrounding it, the point is fair. He’s not the first person, nor will be be the last, o opine that England and its players just not very good. His point is depth, or lackthereof, and he looks to the “English” Premier League’s foreign majority as an indication of such.

“The problems for a coach happens when he doesn’t have many good players at his disposal. Roberto Donadoni has a problem of abundance, while for Capello it’s completely the opposite. Capello for example has more problems fielding a strong English national team because only 38 percent of Premier League players are British.”

(I like the almost surely unintentional jab at Donadoni as if to say, “if you don’t succeed, it’s your fault, son”.)

For me, the most surprising part of all this is the actual number of “British” players in the EPL (I’m guessing this includes all of Britain, not just England, bringing the number even lower), standing at a paltry 38%. It would also be interesting to see what La Liga’s and Serie A’s numbers look like, but it seems highly unlikely it’d be that low. And I don’t think we need stats to tell us the league is getting less and less British by the year.

All in all, looking at the English national team, it’s not as though they’re teeming with the depth or possessing the highest of high quality (a few notable exceptions, of course), such as Italy or Spain. Maybe McClaren isn’t completely to blame for the upcoming summer devoid of football. Maybe it just is what it is.

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Category: English Premier League, Serie A

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Laurie

Sam, I've always wondered exactly how much difference a NT manager can make. (In France they don't even call him a "coach" or "manager." He's the "sélectionneur." The guy who selects.)

Can Capello go beyond that and change an entire country's mentality?
Chris

Arsenal aren't in business for the benefit of the England team.
Tim

Maybe if Arsenal actually got some English or atleast British players in their starting eleven the statistic would be better... Shame on Arsenal
Sam

CabbageMan is on the right track. What he's said about Rooney is just the thing to get the lad motivated to correct his tense-ness around the box.

England has no lack of world-class players: Agbonlahor, Wallcott, Rooney, A Young, Hargreaves, Bentley, J Hart and a 16 year-old in the Arsenal reserves named Jack Wilshere (Hleb meets Pele') ...

Capello has the skill -- psychological, mainly -- to get the new generation of England to play relaxed, exciting & entertaining as well as effective football. He will tech them Catenaccio as well as balls-to-the-wall Route One and they will mix them cleverly. Capello will introduce to the lads the foreign concept of subtlety.

We won't see it for a while, but he can develop the mentality.

The FA finally did something intelligent.

Patience. You will see.
Nelson

i dont know about anyone else, but i think Lippi looks like a baller in that picture
Jan

A remark about the very low La Liga score though: a lot of foreign players in Spain like e.g. Eto'o or Ronaldinho have Spanish passports and are no longer counted in this stat.
Jan

Here are some "foreigner" stats for the Big 5 leagues:
La Liga: 34,2%
Serie A: 38,8%
Ligue 1: 40,1%
Bundesliga: 49,6%
Premier League: 65,8%

Stats regarding the percentage of foreign players who make the starting XI would probably be needed to put the numbers into perspective.
Mike

ok, so maybe I was wrong. I swore I saw that figure though.
Mike

When I read that article that lippi said that, it said somewhere in there that 80%+ of serie A were italian.
Rob

He does have a bit of the Newman about him doesn't he? Sadly I think Ol Blue Eyes is retired from that acting lark.
derek

Based on the photo above, if ever there is a movie made about Lippi they should cast Paul Newman in the lead role.
Rob

Well it has always seemed to hold both England and Spain back, the fact that they have such strong national teams. Italy is very insular in a sense traditionally, despite the forign players there is a real pride in the Italian players in a side or whatever.

I don't think its alarming that only 38% (assuming Lippi's stats are accurate) of the platers in the EPL are English anyway. Coupled with the fact that there are none abroad, maybe then you could worry. But 38% is just over a third, so if you think that there are 3-4 Englishmen playing at each EPL club on average, it seems low, but not like they couldn't do anything about it.

I know I'll have the 'they're overrated' comment thrown back at me, but I do think that looking at the side, Ashley Cole, Rio Ferdinand, John Terry, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole, Wayne Rooney, Owen Hargreaves at least would be challenging for a place in most sides come June in the old Euros. Its not the lack of players, its something in the English mentality that always makes us second best.
jamie

As a neapolitan, I'm not even an England national team fan, but I don't think it's a lack of quality that's holding them back. When we compare, say the English team with the Portuguese or French teams, I could say, backed up by general opinion and statistics, that each England player is better than his counterpart. Lack of quality to choose from, however, should again, not really be a problem. While in central defence, Italy have Nesta, Cannavaro, Barzagli, Bonera, Ferrari, Materazzi, Dessena and Dainelli to choose from, England have Ferdinand, Terry, Lescott, Carragher, Brown, King, Woodgate, Campbell, Davies, Dawson and Richards to choose from. All presumably better players.
So what's the problem? Moving all the bullshit physcology answers, all the excuses, all the 'blame it on the coach-isms' aside...I really don't have a clue.
Why can't a group of professional, highly-respected athletes at the top of their game come together to compete at the elite level? Maybe it's because Cappello has so far ignored my excellent form for Burnham Town FC. Maybe not.
Laurie

I wonder what role money plays in this. How many English players go abroad to get more playing time or improve their skills? Not a lot.

If you're sixteen years old with great potential, why would you go to another league to get better when you get more money sitting on an EPL team bench?
Sheps

There's no doubt that McClaren was a terrible, terrible coach for England. There is also no way that we should lose at home to Croatia. His critical decisions, such as not dropping Robinson until it was too late, then putting in a debutant in the most important qualifier, were just a joke. We should be a decent national side. Not the best, but definitely up there.
Tommy Wong

As much as I'll remember Lippi as a Juve POS, his contribution to the Azzuri & his talking points are spot on. He's absolutely right about England and Capello's pool of choices.