Welcome to Work, Fabio: You’re Doomed (And it’s Wenger’s Fault)

By: Martha | January 7th, 2008

Fab Capz Practically every English paper today is celebrating Fabio Capello’s official first day in charge of England with stories of the woe ahead for the national team. Either England are rubbish already, or they’re going be by the time he leaves (not his fault, just because there’s no talent), or they’re too thin and collapse after a single injury. (The one voice of optimism comes from David Beckham, who finds Capello pleasingly terrifying, so I suppose that’s something.)

The big hitter in the wave of negativity, though, is our old friend Sepp Blatter, who BBC Sport decided needed to be asked for his opinion on English football. Super.

Though Blatter doesn’t specifically throw stones at Capello, he makes it clear that the Italian’s team is doomed if English clubs don’t start caring more about the makeup of their teams than they do about, well, winning. In particular, he rips into the Premiership’s resident easy targets, Arsenal and manager Arsene Wenger, specifically the Frenchman’s recent statement that he doesn’t really care about the English national team, at least insofar as it might affect his team selection. As an example of a team doing things right, Blatter points to AC Milan, who won the Club World Cup with seven Italians in the team — and, he cleverly reminds us, Italy won the World Cup, so nothing more needs to be said, right?

What Blatter conveniently ignores, of course, is that the team on the other side of Milan has at most a single Italian in its starting lineup (and that’s when Marco Materazzi is healthy — for most of the first half, they had none), and are currently seven points clear at the top of Serie A. But, as you may have heard, Italy won the World Cup, right? So maybe, just maybe, it’s not entirely Arsene’s fault that England didn’t qualify for Euro 2008.

There’s never going to be an agreement on the issue of foreigners in football leagues, or the responsibility of club coaches to built up the national team of the country in which they work, but it’s very hard for me to understand telling Wenger he can’t play his first 11 because they were born outside England. Or, indeed, that he should stop making incredibly smart buys of young players from France and Spain, simply because they not British. If the youth system in England continues to develop, someday maybe the great youngster clubs are lining up to buy will be British. Until then, though, Wenger — and everyone else — should be able to do what he wants.