WEMBLEY has its glittering arch and £757million worth of fixtures and fittings. Katowice, in Poland, had its dugout in the rough ground covered by a bent corrugated tin roof that looked like it belonged on grandad’s allotment.
This was where Graham Taylor and his England players hunkered away from the rain after training in 1993, as recalled in ITV’s rerun this week of the remarkable fly-in-the-dressing-room documentary An Impossible Job.
How things have changed. Ahead of tomorrow’s match against Kazakhstan, England have trained at Arsene Wenger’s designer Arsenal camp in Hertfordshire and stayed at the sumptuous hotel nearby where Tiger Woods once played golf.
In faraway Minsk next week, it’s five stars again. The city’s Dinamo Stadium is uncovered but it has welcomed Juventus for a tie against Bate Borisov in the Champions League this season.
This isn’t a cheap knocking job about so-called pampered prima donnas. Instead, it’s a reaction to how startlingly primitive the surroundings were for that critical World Cup qualifying tie 15 years ago when compared with the trappings of modern football.
It also expresses a hope that under Fabio Capello, the lad culture which damaged the England set-up as much as its infection by celebrity has truly been wiped out. In the documentary, everyone is having too much of a laugh, apart from Taylor, who is hammered so hard by ill-fortune his brain melts down.
Training is too often a boys’ lark. Gazza, for all his lovableness, seems a bloody nuisance at times and his hooting and squawking aimed at disrupting a TV interview certainly wouldn’t have promoted any ideas about approaching things with serious professionalism. It was the way of the game at the time and complaining about it could still cast you as a misery.
But its attitudes stayed in place long into this century. In fact, as foreign players poured in, the England squad was the only place all the chaps could be together. And the largely dismal record of the national team during that period, following the failure to reach that 1994 World Cup, suggests it was a big part of a big problem.
If the 4-1 win in Croatia last month was the result of the stern approach of Don Capello, then let’s hail his committed aloofness and his imposition of the idea that he is very much not one of the boys. Nor one for the girls, like Sven-Goran Eriksson.
Steve McClaren ended up playing tag on the training field with the men he was supposed to be leading, fatuously referring in press conferences to Wazza and JT without even realising how genuinely like Mike Bassett it all sounded.
With Capello, it’s surnames only. Cole A and Cole J (when fit) presumably. No fraternisation with the ranks. It’s also meals on time, no golf and fewer hours on the PlayStation.
The philosophy is that discipline, unwavering application and good habits around the camp will be transmitted to the pitch.
This is important right now because Capello is entering Phase Two of his reign. After the win in Zagreb, his imprint is forcefully in place and must stay there.
Naturally enough, the triumph in Croatia was compared with Eriksson’s 5-1 victory in Munich in 2001. This wasn’t the escape from the past it promised. England won only two of their following nine matches, against Albania and Paraguay. Three quarter-final defeats followed for Sven.
One of the reasons was that he became increasingly starstruck; overcome by the high profiles of the players and the needs of the WAGS to turn tournaments into catwalks. He went soft.
McClaren, who should have known better after five years as Sir Alex Ferguson’s No 2, went for chumminess from the start and was doomed all along.
The win in Croatia had its “one of those nights” elements. Yet, during 10 days in September, Capello finally managed to marshall these wayward England players so that they understood the need for shape and control, both of the ball and their emotions. Confidence, movement and adventure swiftly followed.
Sir Alf Ramsey had a certain way with names. Bobby Moore was always Robert. It was Geoffrey Hurst. We’re a long way off addressing Sir Fabio. But we’ve now seen a glimpse of why we’re paying him so much. It’s why there is satisfaction in knowing that England’s midfield tomorrow will consist of Lampard (F) and Gerrard (S), not Lamps and Stevie G.
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