As Fabio Capello prepares to lead his England players into European Championship qualifying battle against Bulgaria, the focus in the English press is, of course, on the Three Lions.
The basic crux of all of the articles spread around Friday’s newspapers is that Mr Capello is under pressure and that his side must produce a performance of acceptable quality in order to ease that pressure.
Among those analysing the build-up is Matt Lawton at the Mail who was left intrigued by Capello’s pre-match press conference, in which he demonstrated his intellectual credentials by borrowing a line from Mary Shelley’s famous 1818 novel, Frankenstein.
“Did he borrow the line from a Frankenstein movie or from Franco Baldini? Or was it something, despite his long struggle to master the English language, that just came to Fabio Capello there and then?
‘To a new world of gods and monsters,’ declared Septimus Pretorius to Dr Frankenstein in toasting the creation of a bride for Boris Karloff’s beast. And yesterday, England’s manager, perhaps inspired in part by his intellectual assistant, Baldini, used such a line for his own devices.
It amounted to quite a moment during Capello’s tenure at the Football Association — a statement that was very much directed at his critics but one that also revealed a deeper understanding of the role he continues to perform.
The world the England manager occupies is one of extremes, he now realises. He’s a god if he wins; a monster if he loses. In the eyes of some, anyway.
Not that it seemed to bother him too much on the eve of a European Championship qualifier against Bulgaria that could yet determine if he is still employed by the FA when England meet Montenegro at Wembley next month. Did he feel under enormous pressure? ‘This is a big game for England, not for me,’ he said.”
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