Thaindian News

London, Jul 4 (ANI): Coach Fabio Capello, who is attempting to move on from the World Cup debacle, has been blamed even by those players who believed he was the right man to lead England.

The FA has decided to back Capello for another two years and he has made it clear there will be a huge shake-up should England start poorly.

News of the World reports that England’s World Cup campaign saw the team driven by paranoia, haunted by fear and relying on the superstition of sticking to the same kit as a plank for success.

One senior player said: “We all bought into the manager’s ways in qualification because everything he said and did brought us success. The question many of us are asking is why he forgot most of those principles once we got to South Africa.”

“Everything he’d done before went out the window. It got to the stage where some of us were asking why Fabio had sent his clueless twin brother to manage England during the World Cup,” News of the World reports quoted a player, as saying

Another player said: “A lot of us loved Fabio for the way he turned things around after Steve McClaren but can’t understand why he destroyed so much of what he’d built.”

“The World Cup was almost too big for him which is mad when you think of everything he’s done. He was obsessed with people not knowing the team. He grew paranoid about revealing it even to the players who would be playing.”

Capello would only name the team in a meeting five minutes before the squad left the hotel even though leaks and rumours had already reached the players, the paper reports.

Capello’s regime even included banning the players from ordering room service, not trusting them to comply with the diet devised by the FA’s nutritionists.

One fringe player said: “The news filtered back about what JT had said to the press and a lot of the big boys went mad.

“It wasn’t just because JT looked as if he was trying to be captain again, it was because it killed any chance of anybody speaking to the manager. We all knew from Fabio’s staff just what a mistake JT had made. The team meeting that night was pathetic.”

Another player admitted: “Rooney was struggling because he’d never known anything like it before. Nothing he did in games was working, he couldn’t control his temper in training and his behaviour was strange, to say the least.” (ANI)