Fabio Capello's Resignation Continues England's Trend of Pre-Tournament Dramas

England's preparation for this summer's European Championships was being sullied by yet another pre-tournament drama before they had even qualified. Wayne Rooney's sending off during the final qualifier with Montenegro, meaning he would miss games from the Euro 2012 group stage, seemed so typical of a nation that has made a habit out of making things difficult for themselves that the incident itself wasn't especially surprising, just the comparative earliness in the usual process of things.

More in keeping with the usual schedule of self-destruction was today's resignation of Fabio Capello, itself a product of the furore surrounding former-England captain John Terry's alleged racial abuse of Anton Ferdinand.

At a point when the national side's manager should be continuing to analyse potential squad members and getting ready to prepare his team for the group stage, it has instead become a position vacant, left for rumor and speculation to keep warm until a new "permanent" appointment is made.

The Terry situation understandably had put a lot of people in an uncomfortable spot, but the Football Association's failure to suitably communicate over the issue with Capello was in keeping with the governing body's history of incompetence and a thorough lack of knowledge about the game they are supposed to be running.

Capello was not wrong in his assessment that Terry should have been viewed as innocent until proven guilty. The postponement of his trial until July may have made things difficult and may have indeed divided the England squad. But what is a manager, if not someone who's responsibility it is to deal with everything that comes his team's way? The good, the bad and the ugly, for better or worse.

The FA took matters into their own hands, and whether you believe them to be in the right or not, they now face the consequences.

FA chairman David Bernstein, general secretary Alex Horne and the Club England management team will now go about appointing Capello's replacement, a process itself synonymous with creating unnecessary pre-tournament kerfuffle. Back prior to the 2006 World Cup the FA, back then under the stewardship of Brian Barwick had conducted a public and very messy search for the man to replace Sven Goran Eriksson after the tournament. Luiz Felipe Scolari, Guus Hiddink, Martin O'Neill and an array of the then most high-profile English coaches were interviewed with Steve McClaren eventually settled on.

If that was a process the current members of the FA had intended to avoid, that plan has been blown out of the water now. Coming as it will during the season, the search will have repercussions beyond the planning of Euro 2012, with some club somewhere destined to deal with flirtations for their manager.

Of course though it has not just been the FA who have been responsible for England heading into a tournament in less than ideal circumstances. The managerial search in 2006 was in part a result of Eriksson's entanglement in a tabloid sting and other scandals before. If the English tabloid press had not claimed another coaching scalp immediately prior to a tournament previously, they had found other ways of undermining things.

During the 1982 World Cup the front page hacks had by all accounts attempted to snare the England players in scandal by trying to create a situation where they could catch them with their pants down. It did not work, but it all but heralded an era when supporting the team has only been secondary to using them to sell newspapers.

This hasn't always been an issue of those writing in the front pages. Anyone now reading the work of the sports writers themselves in 1990 would be shocked at the vitriol directed the way of then England manager Bobby Robson. Analysing and choosing to criticise his decision to accept a job at PSV Eindhoven before his England contract had finished was one thing, but taking it to the personal level many did was a step too far and only proceeded to damage relations with the England camp. A relationship that has never recovered.

The respective incidents with Rooney and Terry have shown that players are far from innocent bystanders in creating England's trend for drama. Though even for them it is not always avoidable, and you can hardly blame Rooney for the metatarsal injury prior to World Cup 2006 that led to such vociferous debate over whether or not he should have been taken to the tournament at less than 100 percent.

Eriksson's decision to take and then not even play Theo Walcott at that tournament was a constant elephant in the room. But then, the make-up of a squad will have been a source of debate for probably every England squad since their first World Cup in 1950, and maybe before that.

That is a drama that cannot be avoided, and it is not one we want to avoid in some ways, as discussion about actual sporting matters are what makes supporters so passionate (and is indeed at the heart of this very website).

Even if a certain manager's selection policy might make you want to bang your ahead against the wall, you can accept it as being part and parcel of football. But for once it would be nice to keep it about just that, about the sport itself.

No Bobby Moore being arrested on false claims of robbery in Colombia, no dentist chairs, no tabloid stings, no managerial resignations. Just England getting ready for a tournament. Yeah, and pigs might fly...