Why England Would Be Wise to keep Capello

In typical knee jerk reaction style, many of the English tabloids as well as aggrieved ex football players are calling for the dismissal of Fabio Capello as coach of the English football team.  Some such as Roy Keane are putting the blame for their lack lustre performance on the players. If the English FA does remove Fabio Capello as coach then they are likely to be masking the real causes of their failure and in the process making Capello the scapegoat and setting back English football even further.

Any student of total quality management should clearly identify with the 95 – 5 rule: 95% of problems within any organisation are system related while 5% are related to individual human factors. By system related we mean things such as policies and procedures, recruitment and selection, training, remuneration, environmental factors and equipment for example. Removing Capello is focusing on the 5% factor.  More focus should be placed on those systems issues which go into the creation of a world beating team such as player development. These are long term factors rather than short term factors. It may be prudent to wipe the slate clean and look at England’s 20 year olds and start preparing them for the next world cup, after all they did make the finals against Germany last year.