England Fans Cry "Why Capello? Why?"

Oh boy. After an England defeat, every English fan becomes England's manager.

That's when all the slicing and dicing and hair pulling goes on. So as a life long England fan, here is my two cents. This is what Fabio Capello did wrong against Germany. And there were lots so get the coffee and doughnuts.

THE 4-4-2 FORMATION

This was the biggest problem of all. England pundits—some of whom are England's best former players—Chris Waddle, Alan Shearer, Lee Dixon. Top English managers—Terry Venables, Harry Redknapp, Glenn Hoddle—all tell you that the 4-4-2 is too rigid and easy to attack.

It's basically like playing against training cones. Its simple, flat, and rigid. Germany showed us how to carve up England defensively. And they did it all day.

STARS MISALIGNED
Fabio Capello has stubbornly refused to play his stars in their most productive club positions. Instead of building a formation around his best players, he's tried to shoehorn them into his favorite formation, the 4-4-2.

Yes, Capello will argue that his formation has produced success wherever he's gone and won trophies with it by molding players around his formation. Yes, but that was at club level where he gets to work with the same group of players day after day in training and week after week during the club season.

At the international level, he sees them a couple of times a month during qualifiers and a month together at tournaments. There's no way you can execute that strategy at international level and the best you can do is figure out what your players do best at and use what they already know.

FAILURE TO PREPARE AND MOTIVATE
Reports from training camp brought attention to Capello's bland and boring training camp atmosphere which appears to fall somewhere between a prison and a boot camp. Yes, players are not on holiday. We get that. But when you sequester 23 players for five weeks where days contain five to six hours of free time, how do you keep players motivated and engaged?

Players report that they rarely get to watch film on opponents. In the NFL especially, film work is essential to team training. Players have to watch film of themselves and their opponents. Instead, Capello has the boys doing lots of sprints and laps and push ups and other inane exercises. Why Capello? Why?

Training sessions during the World Cup should be about film work—watching opponents recent games, teaching tactics, and learning as much as possible. 

Learning as much about the enemy is absolutely an essential part of tactical strategy.

Sun Tzu wrote about that in The Art Of War in the 6th Century BC.

Sounds like good advice to me even today.

BAFFLING SELECTIONS AND SUBSTITUTIONS
The biggest puzzle was the persistence with using Emile Heskey even to the bitter end today when England needed goals—they took off their best goalscorer Defoe and put on Heskey who can't hit a barn from ten yards.

Somewhere, Capello has this notion that when Heskey is on the field, he magically transforms Wayne Rooney into the scorer that he is at club level. Wrong wrong wrong.

As well, Capello never used Joe Cole in this tournament in a meaningful way. He is one of England's most creative midfielders and that's what England lacked all this time—someone to unlock defences.

Why Capello? Why?

Today, when Glen Johnson was hobbled and needed to come off, he had Jamie Carragher, a centre back who has played right back for Liverpool. Instead, he puts Shaun Wright Phillips, a winger, at right back.

He didn't even reshuffle the defence so that SWP could be thrown forward as an extra attacker. Little SWP actually played right back for the rest of the game.

Why Capello? Why?

These and other baffling decisions just annoy the hell out of me!

Six million pounds a year he gets paid by the English Football Association.

They're just as negligent and culpable in this sordid mess.