After been virtually invisable over the last week during Fabio Capello’s latest PR Gaffes, ‘Club England’ managing director, Adrian Bevington finally emerged to appear on BBC Radio 5 Live Sportsweek’s programme over the weekend to claim that the next England manager will be English.
His quote “I think the English team should be managed by an English manager,” appeared to be a future generalization rather than a direct threat to Fabio Capello’s job. Although, after the week Capello has just had, the future, could be sooner rather than later.
I don’t want to be seen as a typical FA basher, as I’m not one. But there does appear to be eliments of the press and media out there that blames the FA for taxes and bad weather, etc, and sometimes you can see why. Personally, considering their remit – to cover football from local Sunday league level, right up to the England team – I don’t think they do that bad a job.
The problem they seem to have is seperating the professional side of the game, from the amateur side. This whole idea of creating ‘Club England’ to keep it apart from general duties would be good one if it was run properly and professionally, but the problem is that it appears to not be run professionally.
Bevington was invisable last week during the Beckham furore. This is also not the only time recently that ‘Club England’ seem to have disappeared.
Where were they during the whole issue of the embarrassing Capello index? Also, why was Capello allowed to engage in public haggling over his new contract in the build up to the world cup, when he had stated none of his players were to do this?
And then get his contract as well. Who’s fault that is, is a debate in itself.
Then we had the lack of direction after the world cup fiasco when Sir Dave Richards stated he wanted two weeks to decide if he wanted to keep Capello, while the shameless Italian pissed off on a seemingly never ending holiday.
Then it was announced – coincidently the day after Roy Hodgson took the Liverpool job – that Capello would stay on as England manager. Another example of lack of direction.
All this is just basic stuff. This isn’t going anywhere near the real issues of developing young talent and a coaching system for the future, all duties that the FA is responsible for. On this evidence the chances of ever creating a system like the Spanish one, or Dutch one, throughout the Premier League is light years away.
At the moment the FA are residing over a great football stadium with no pitch. An England manager that can’t even communicate in English, with no people skills, who conned them into giving him a new ‘money-for-old-rope’ contract, with a potential £12 million payout to get rid of him.
They have Dave Richards involved who apparently presided over Capello’s contract fiasco. Sir Trevor Brooking, who dosen’t seem capable of getting any of his ideas taken seriously or on board.
They have a Prince as their diplomatic figurehead who rarely shows his face, most English football fans would probably be surprised to find out he has anything to do with the FA. One year he couldn’t even be bothered to turn up for the FA cup final. And he has also been invisable in the 2018 campaign, they might as well give David Beckham his job, he has already shown more commitment to the cause.
This simply isn’t good enough. So come on FA, pull your fingers out and get this sorted, or step aside and let someone more suited do the job have a go.