Action man the model for Fabio Capello

It is not only John Terry who will have to audition for his England place. The message that is becoming increasingly clear from those who have met Fabio Capello as he travels around the country and acclimatises to English football is that any number of positions in the national team are up for grabs.

Capello’s most recent selection may have restored a few old favourites to the starting lineup – and would have included one more had Frank Lampard not been ill – but it does not mean that the trial period is over. Quite the opposite. Capello has not started on how England play. Right now, he is more interested in who can play and that is going to leave a few members of his squad with a big decision to make this summer.

This England manager does not have 40 years’ appreciation of the domestic game. He has none before January, in fact. Everything he does is based on recent experience and a player who is not in the starting lineup for his club cannot be assessed.

Take Peter Crouch. He was, by many accounts, Liverpool’s best player against Arsenal on Saturday, but he started only because Rafael BenÍtez was keeping his powder dry for the Champions League quarter-final, second leg against the same opponents tomorrow. Between England’s match against Switzerland on February 6 and the game against France in Paris on March 26, Crouch started two matches for Liverpool. The last of those was on February 16, so in the 5½ weeks before Capello’s second match in charge, Crouch was on the field for 53 minutes. Capello’s people saw more of David Beckham – and he was playing on another continent.

Theo Walcott, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Joe Cole, Owen Hargreaves, Wayne Bridge and Michael Carrick, take note. The days of the bit-part England player are over. This guy wants players he can see. It may not have benefited Jermain Defoe yet, but his decision to leave Tottenham Hotspur for Portsmouth was the right one if he has England ambitions.

It is interesting that a return to Fratton Park could be one of the options available to Crouch in the summer. The loss to the elite clubs will be the rest of the Barclays Premier League’s gain if the England squad wakes up to the fact that no player is going to conquer the world under Capello from a berth on the bench, or from Liverpool’s reserve team.

原文地址:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/martin_samuel/article3694646.ece