Soccer Updates: Why Harry Redknapp is not the ideal manager to replace Fabio Capello?
After Fabio Capello’s abysmal performance as the manager of the English football team at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. A lot of questions have been raised with regard to English football. English media has come out in full flow and is now working on a comprehensive campaign to somehow get F.A to fire Fabio Capello and in doing so make way for another manager who will lead the English team to football glory.
So what exactly went wrong for Capello? After having a brilliant qualification campaign with England for the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, his English side self destructed in spectacular fashion. England drew their match against U.S.A and Algeria.
Both of these teams are not as highly rated as England, they additionally lack the plethora of superstars that the English squad boasts. England went on to win their last group stage match against Slovenia, in order to qualify for the knockout stages of the tournament.
In the first round of the knockout stages of the competition, the English were drawn against a young German side. Germany and England have always been rivals in international football and this match was no less than a local European derby.
English were touted as favorites to win the match despite being below par previously in the tournament, they were said to have gained their edge on the Germans because of the experience in their ranks and the lack of it in the German youth. The match ended in embarrassment and humiliation for the England football team as they lost 4-1 to the Germans.
Fabio Capello took most of the blame for playing his old 4-4-2 style, with two strikers and four midfielders supported by a flat-back four. The formation which in itself is the oldest known formation in football has become tactically extinct now in modern football. Where game is played on pace and counter attack, most teams utilize 4-2-3-1 or some of its derivations in order to cope with possession football.
Fabio Capello employed out-dated tactics due to which England failed to perform. Although this cannot be touted as the single-most important reason for the English failure, it did contribute in their elimination for the FIFA 2010 World Cup.
The man who is being hyped up by the British media to replace Capello is Harry Redknapp. His track record however, remains unproven. Many of his followers firstly, cite that Capello’s track record was excellent but he couldn’t make it work with England so that in itself is a reason not to pay too much attention to a man’s past managerial record.
Others say that Harry has a fine management record, his performance at clubs like Southampton, Portsmouth and Tottenham has shown that Harry can do his best with limited resources at his disposal, so imagine what he will be able to do with all the English talent at his disposal.
These people do not realize that English team’s faults did not lie in their lack of talent or the lack of resources. Their problems laid in the out dated tactics that the manager used, as a result of these tactics; players were played out of positions and couldn’t perform. Also, some players didn’t perform regardless of their positions on the field, such as John Terry and Glenn Johnson.
Harry Redknapp has utilized one system and one system only throughout his managerial career, a conventional 4-4-2 which is exactly the same as the one that Capello used during the World Cup in South Africa. At his time with Portsmouth, Harry played Jermaine Defoe along with Peter Crouch upfront, at his time with Tottenham he has played Jermaine Defoe and Peter Crouch upfront yet again, sometimes Peter Crouch is replaced by Roman Pavlyuchenko but the system remains the same.
This system in itself has been the downfall of English football. Other teams at the World Cup like Brazil, Germany, Spain, Argentina and Netherlands have employed different formations such as 4-3-3, 4-3-2-1 or 4-2-3-1. They have all already booked their berths in the quarter finals but England have had to go back home early.
English media’s number one selection for the job has been Redknapp; Redknapp is a good manager at an average club level but at international level one has to compete against unconventional tactics and out of the box management, something that Redknapp is not capable of as yet.
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