Monday, December 24, 2007
Fabio Capello Goes "Brit"
The
ANNOTICO Report
Fabio
Capello is making an effort to adapt to the
English lifestyle and learn the language in a month by taking intensive lessons
with a full-time teacher is provoking admiration.
Language
problems aside, Italians can't imagine adapting to English food, climate and
customs. Capello, however when Captain of Real Madrid, he rarely ate spaghetti,
opting instead for Basque food at the Txistou
restaurant.
Though Capello is regarded as one of the best coaches in
international football, Capello is not universally
liked in Italy because of his "tough" personality, his unpopular managerial
decisions and most of all because he has never expressed a desire to coach the
"Azzurri", the Italian national team. Nor
has he expressed a particular love for his home country, having always
expressed interest in foreign teams and a desire to be abroad.
Italians
tock notice when Capello
declared in an interview with La Stampa that he would
like to be there for an England-Italy final in 2010's World Cup. That would be
nasty, indeed.
Fabio Goes Native
Bookmakers are
offering odds already that by next February,
Though he is
regarded as one of the best coaches in international football, Capello is not universally liked in Italy because of his
"tough" personality, his unpopular managerial decisions and most of
all because he has never expressed a desire to coach the "Azzurri", the Italian national team. Nor has he
expressed a particular love for his home country, having always expressed
interest in foreign teams and a desire to be abroad.
However, his
promise to adapt to the English lifestyle and learn the language in a month by
taking intensive lessons with a full-time teacher is provoking in Italians a
mix of sympathy and admiration. Nobody really believes it is possible to do it
so quickly - the language barrier is a widely shared problem in
Yet they know
that Capello is different: he can adapt very well to
local customs - when he was coach in
But the most
discussed "detail", the one that stands out and irritates most, is
the amount of money he will earn with his new contract: 9m for four and a half
years, meaning he will be the highest-paid manager in the history of national
teams.
Capello has also announced that
managing the
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/anna_masera/2007/12/fabio_goes_native.html
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