Daily Mail

BENTLEY VIEW ON ‘POSTMAN PAT’ FABIO SHOWS WEAKNESS AT HEART OF ENGLISH GAME

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DAVID BENTLEY has been recalling his days as an England internatio­nal, under Fabio Capello. He said the players did not like it when the manager banned tomato ketchup, spoke of smuggling a McDonald’s takeaway in with Jimmy Bullard when under curfew and laughed about referring to Capello as ‘Postman Pat’ to his face. Capello’s limited English meant he wasn’t in on the joke and would carry on talking, while players sniggered behind his back. ‘If you are tense and overthink it, you play rigid,’ Bentley (above) concludes. ‘And that’s England’s problem.’ No. England’s problem is that, given the chance to work with a coach who has won the Champions League, five Serie A titles and two La Liga titles, who was European Coach of the Year in 1994, Serie A Coach of the Year in 2005, who has been inducted into the Hall of Fame for both Italy and AC Milan, instead of receiving informatio­n and learning, England’s chucklehea­ded idiots preferred to gripe about fast food and sugar-laden condiments and make stupid in-jokes. Meaning they got their clock cleaned at the 2010 World Cup, not because they were too rigid, but because they couldn’t master the basics of tactical organisati­on that are second nature to teams like Germany. Yes, Capello did look a bit like Postman Pat; but England too often look like a team with all the football nous of his black and white cat. And that’s a lot more embarrassi­ng.

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