The furore over Fabio has died down and already the Italian is yesterday’s man, metaphorically “sleeping with the fishes” should you prefer the kind of language with which he might have a greater familiarity, since he never really got the hang of English.

That failure to grasp the mother tongue was one of the major planks used to beat the Italian over the head during his time as England manager or, more accurately, since the results dried up in the run up to the World Cup in South Africa in 2010. After living a charmed early life as he looked to be building an England side that looked as if it meant business with that win in Croatia, things gradually slipped away from him and, even though he delivered qualification for Euro 2012, the lustre never returned to his reputation and he began to look like yet another hopeless choice as England boss, in spite of the fact that, yet again, none of those claiming 20/20 vision in hindsight had made such a piercing insight at the time of his appointment. This time though, it’s going to be different. Harry is going to save us. We all agree and we are all always right. Except every time.

 

If we might however interject a moment of reality into the dream sequence though, pause for a moment to reflect on this. In his coaching career, Fabio Capello won seven Serie A titles (albeit that two were revoked at Juventus), and two La Liga trophies. He won the UEFA Champions League and the European Super Cup, as well as sundry other Italian domestic trophies. Harry Redknapp has won one FA Cup.

 

This is not a “Get ‘Arry” attack. After all, his Spurs time is currently the most beguiling thing in the Premier League and he has always delivered teams that have attacking instincts as their basis wherever he has gone. Nor is it his fault that he works in a country where you’re only likely to win things at two, three, maybe four clubs. West Ham weren’t one of them.

 

But let us also look at that Tottenham team in a little more depth. How have they gone through the gears in the last couple of seasons to a point where third place looks theirs for the taking? They brought in a delightful playmaker, perhaps the most exciting footballer in the Premier League, in Luka Modric. He is the fulcrum of all that is consistently good about Spurs. Croatian.

 

They have that elemental force with the left foot kissed by the angels, even if other parts of him are less blessed. Gareth Bale is the kind of footballer that comes around very seldom, both exciting and productive, the kind that unhinges other teams, however good. Welsh.

 

There’s that sharp thinker with the quick feet that gets in between midfield and attack, dropping off into space, popping up in the penalty area, scoring goals, creating others. Rafael van der Vaart is the consummate footballer, intelligent, analytical, emotional too. Dutch.

 

The goalkeeper, utterly dependable after a few seasons where Tottenham have shelled too many daft goals with all the consequences that that brings with it. Brad Friedel has brought admirable stability at White Hart Lane. American.

 

They’ve got a holding midfielder as good as anything in the league, a winner of tackles, a simple purveyor of the sensible pass, but with the vision to spot a gap and the drive and energy to get forward an exploit it. Scott Parker is a worthy Footballer of the Year. Lads, we’ve found one! English!

 

And that is the problem that confronts Harry Redknapp or whoever else might yet be ushered into the England job. You have to make do with what’s got the right passport, not the players you can assemble from elsewhere.

Perhaps that’s what makes the England job that bit harder than running the national side in Spain Italy, Germany, for while they have their share of foreign imports, they are nothing like as cosmopolitan as the English Premier League, and nor are the key slots in so many big teams nailed down by footballers from abroad.

 

Certainly from within the corridors of power at Wembley, even before the new man is anointed, words of caution are being issued such as these from Adrian Bevington, Managing Director of Club England.

 

“How many good tournaments have we had since 1950? Let’s have some reality about this. We have a responsibility as a national association to put the right structure in place to let the coaches across all our teams reach finals and give the senior manager the best chance, getting more players available, better technical players, so that they can go and compete at the latter stages of finals.

“That’s why we have to talk long-term and stop just bouncing in between one tournament and another and trying to apologise for why we’ve not gone past the quarter-finals. We’ve only been past the quarter-finals three times in our history. So what gives us the right to say we expect to win a tournament?”

 

Who can argue with that? All told, we’ve had one World Cup win (at home) in 1966 and one World Cup semi-final in 1990. In the European Championships, we’ve reached two semi-finals in 1968 and 1996 (at home). Had it not been for Sir Alf Ramsey and a couple of home tournaments, our international record wouldn’t be simply sad, it would be pathetic. That golden day in 1966 aside, the record ranks with the likes of Belgium, Sweden, Bulgaria and plenty of others, decent, solid nations who do not labour under the delusions of grandeur that perpetually cripple England as they go into tournament after tournament supposedly among the favourites.

 

The reasons for England’s “failures” are many and complex, from the amount of football we play, through the media scrutiny that our game is subjected to, to the lifestyles of the celebrity footballers who don’t always look quite as preoccupied with turning England into a success as they might be.

 

But in the end, it comes down to the one thing it has always come down to, because for all the fads and formations, new ideas and nutrition, the essential core of the game is always the same. It’s about how good your footballers are. By and large, ours haven’t been good enough, not at the absolute top level.

 

Why did we win in 1966? Good management and team selection was key, but look at that team. The best goalkeeper in the world in Gordon Banks. The best left-back in Ray Wilson. Incomparably the best defender in Bobby Moore. Genuinely world class – genuinely note – players in Alan Ball, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst. And possibly the best player in the world for the 12 months either side of the final in Bobby Charlton. Seven properly world class players, at least four of whom would have walked into any other side in that competition. When was the last time that happened? That’ll be 1966. Not since, not even close.

 

Name me an Englishman that would unquestionably command a place in the Spanish side of the last four years, not simply on the basis of ability but on discipline, compatibility with the rest of the team and a low maintenance approach to life. You’re struggling aren’t you?

 

Again, this is not an attack on English footballers. The last decade has seen some very fine footballers play for the country, the likes of Michael Owen, David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, John Terry, Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Wayne Rooney. Fine players yes. Great players? That is the real question.

 

None have truly delivered where it matters for England because none has seen the England side through to the last four of a major competition. When Owen went to Real Madrid to play, he was fairly swiftly on his way home again. Beckham was a little more successful in La Liga perhaps, but that career was curtailed pretty sharply for a move to the MLS amid his own difficulties when it came to getting in the team.

 

The others, true to our national insularity, have not even ventured overseas to ply their trade and who can blame them for that given that everything they could want is on their doorstep, including a financial settlement that only a very few clubs beyond our shores could offer. They have the comfort of home, fame, fortune and a familiarity with the demands of our game. But they are not stretched in quite the same way that players are when they are taken out of their comfort zones. Look back to that period in the late 1970s and early 1980s when finances dragged our players across Europe and recall just how much better players Kevin Keegan, Ray Wilkins, Trevor Francis became after prolonged exposure to another kind of thinking and discipline. That Gerrard and Lampard have not done likewise must delight the denizens of Anfield and Stamford Bridge, but from an English perspective, it is a very different thing.

 

Given the Premier League’s continuing rude financial health in defiance of any sensible economic reality, it’s unlikely that many of our players will be reaching for the passports in the near future, so therefore we need to address the problems from within. The Academy structure within English football has certainly helped and as we see England competing strongly down the age groups there is clearly a suggestion that we are beginning to deliver talented young footballers to our first teams.

 

But we need to do much more than that and, finally, with the creation of the long awaited St George’s Park National Football Centre in Burton which is scheduled to be ready in August, we are finally, and far too belatedly, following in the footsteps of the likes of the French and Spanish who have long been at the forefront of producing talented, technically adept young footballers.

 

That, of course, is only the first part. Opportunities to play the game then need to be forthcoming. It’s still a concern that so many of our young internationals, even in and around the Under 21s, are not playing Premier League football on a regular basis, their pathway to the top being blocked off by older players and those drafted in from abroad. That can then lead to stalled development and plenty of that early good work going to waste.

 

Equally, the question of just what we pay these young footballers must come to the fore. If a young man of 20, who has maybe played two or three games, is in a position to buy himself a top of the range car and move into a very nicely appointed apartment, then he will be a very special character indeed if he doesn’t sit back now and again and think that he’s made it. What is there left to achieve from there, at least in a monetary sense? What drives you on after that? Which isn’t to say that plenty have the necessary ambition and self respect to go and stretch their ability to the maximum, but others must surely fall by the wayside.

 

Many, many issues face English football on the international front, perhaps the least important of which is who is going to be who replaces Fabio Capello. It could well be that a swift injection of Redknapp might galvanise the players in the summer and England might just miraculously emerge with real credit from out of nowhere just as the Danes did back in’92 when they were dropped back into the tournament at a moment’s notice. Whoever takes over will enjoy the honeymoon effect that seems to count for so much in the English game, and that might be enough to sustain them through the Euros. But what then?

 

Where England goes from here is in all our hands. And the first decision we have to make is do we care? Really care? Because if we can only be bothered to take an interest in the top team once every two years rather than the grass roots all the time, we really shouldn’t bother at all. It’d save us all a lot of heartache.