Well ciao then Fabio. Without so much as a backward glance or hint of regret Fabio Capello walked out of Wembley and turned his back on around £3 million he was due to earn by the end of EURO 2012. I appear to be in a small minority of England fans who are sad to see Fabio go. Most seem to be booking the Archbishop for Harry Redknapp’s inevitable coronation, but is the departure of Capello as a good a piece of news as every writer at The Sun would have us believe?

 

In terms of setting England up with a handy excuse when we inevitably lose to Germany in the quarter finals of the Euros, it’s great news! However Capello is a man who won more than 2/3 of his games in charge, the highest level ever. He was showing signs of having learnt the lessons of the disastrous World Cup campaign of 2010. Then players complained of feeling like they were locked away in a prison camp in Rustenburg (I don’t know of many prison camps with 5 stars, but that’s a topic for another day). This time around England’s players are to stay in a similar complex but in the heart of Krakow, allowing them ample opportunity to avoid felling cut off from the world. And yet despite obvious concessions to the players many were already anointing Harry as their choice hours after Capello’s resignation, suggesting they may not have been too unhappy to see him leave.

 

With his departure England loses a manager who has won major trophies with every club he has managed, and by appointing Harry they would gain a man who once won an FA Cup. Admittedly he has turned around a poor Tottenham side and made them into an exciting, attacking side on the verge of a title challenge. But he has done this with shrewd transfer dealings, something you can’t do with a national side! He also famously is not a training ground manager. He prefers to let his assistants, led by Joe Jordan, run the training sessions. How this would translate to the international arena where managers have limited time with the players is anybody’s guess.

 

One thing Harry has in his favour is his abilities as a man manager. He’s successfully kept all of the egos in his Tottenham squad onside, despite many of them seeing very little playing time. Most impressively he’s got Luka Modric playing well this season, even after he publicly expressed his wish to leave the club for Chelsea last summer.

 

Despite all this I just can’t see Harry having enough top level experience to justify taking over a team that went unbeaten in qualifying and has a realistic chance of a last four spot at EURO 2012. If I was in charge at the FA I’d be on the phone to Guus Hiddink. His experience and success in international management is almost unmatched in recent years. After a mixed time at his most recent job with Turkey he’s available straight away and wouldn’t need to be expensively bought out of a contract. So a more experienced manager for less money, hard not to see that as a win, win.