By Duncan Mackay
British Sports Internet Writer of the Year
August 10 – Sebastian Coe, Britain’s double Olympic 1500 metres champion and now the head of the committee organising the London 2012 Olympics, has blamed the Football Association and Fabio Capello for England’s failure to do well at the World Cup in South Africa earlier this year.
Coe, a leading member of the England 2018 World Cup bid, has claimed that the FA have failed to come to terms with the changing face of international football, he wrote in his regular column published in the Daily Telegraph.
He has also blamed England coach Capello for his failure to prepare his players properly for the World Cup, where they were humiliated 4-1 in the last 16 by Germany.
Coe wrote: ”Too many in club football and at the Football Association refused to grasp the changing face of the international game.
“More of the same and one last heave always appeared to be the panacea after a failed tournament.
I’m not in the camp that routinely blames the foreign legion now camped out in English football for our dismal performance in South Africa.
“There may well be less opportunity for British talent to hold down first-team places but those who are playing have had their game advanced by playing alongside overseas talent.
“Ask Frank Lampard about his learning curve at Chelsea under the tutelage of Gianfranco Zola and Marcel Desailly.
“Nor should our foreign coaches be the Aunt Sally.
“Arsène Wenger changed the face of English football.
“And it was more than replacing steak and chips with pasta or recruiting young talent from European leagues.
“Wenger, like Jose Mourinho, is a coach in the way I recognised mine.
“A master of the essential scientific disciplines that underpin performance.
“Not for him, the management of ‘it’ll be all right on the night’.”
Coe. a season ticket-holder at Chelsea who has been supporting them for nearly 40 years, clearly believes that Capello was lacking in his application of science in preparations for the World Cup, comparing him unfavourably to Wenger, Arsenal’s French manager.
Coe wrote: ”It is unlikely that he [Wenger] would have taken an England team from sea level to altitude and back again for meaningless friendlies, only to return to thin air again, all in the space of three weeks.
“Under these conditions, fatigue and underperformance were almost guaranteed.
“And if, as has been stated recently, those England players who reported for World Cup duty were already exhausted, why continue with such a fatally flawed build-up?
“Show me any successful Olympic team that would have gone about a campaign in this way.
“Show me any other World Cup side for that matter.”
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