Fabio Capello fancies the England job and he has already won the support of former England manager Terry Venables:

“People like Capello and Marcello Lippi, who won the World Cup with Italy, are tough guys who wouldn’t find it so difficult working here.”

There are signs of a media momentum building behind Capello in a similar fashion to how, a few years ago, the London press convinced themselves that Sven Goran Eriksson was the man to transform England into a sophisticated continental team.

There are, as always with these debates, plenty of fascinating arguments for and against appointing Capello (or Lippi) as manager of the English national side. Let us put Lippi aside for the moment — he has expressed no interest in the job and 18 months ago, when I attended his final press conference as Italy coach, the day after he had won the World Cup, I asked him whether he would ever consider working in England and he replied in the negative. The reason he gave was significant however — he doesn’t speak English and he wouldn’t want to work in a country where he can’t communicate with people. Lippi speaks Italian and French.

Unless he has been hiding his language skills — something a lot of Italians do — or he has been studying hard in the past year or so (something that wouldn’t be so surprising) Fabio Capello doesn’t speak much English, if any at all. He speaks Italian and Spanish.

Oliver Kay in The Times notes this may be a problem:

Capello is 61 and would be the oldest man to be appointed to the job, but his age is far less of an issue than his relatively poor grasp of English. He will probably need an English-speaking assistant if he gets the job.

In most walks of life the fact that you don’t speak the language of your employers or your staff would ruled you out of consideration for a position before you even brought your translator along with you to the job interview. For a job as a football coach — where communicating with your players is a huge part of the role — it seems incredible that a non-English speaker would even be considered for the England job.

Sure, you can always have an English speaking assistant or a translator along side you on the bench but, if you have ever seen coaches work like this, you will understand that it can be a major drawback. You can get the words translated but the emphasis, the passion, the urgency and sometimes the detail, get lost. Try telling a joke through a translator and see if you get a real laugh. Try asking a translator to yell at John Terry in the last five minutes of a crucial game at a packed Wembley.

There are some coaches that have succeeded without speaking the main language of their players and German Otto Rehhagel with Greece at Euro 2004 is probably the best example. There are also, as the Guardian’s Sid Lowe notes here, plenty of good arguments for giving Don Fabio a chance — he has a tremendous record in Italy and Spain having won titles with every club he has been in charge of. On top of that, English football no longer has a problem with having a foreigner in charge of the national side.

But is language going to be the barrier to Capello’s ambition?

PHOTO: Fabio Capello watches the Italian national team train at the Puskas stadium in Budapest August 21, 2007. REUTERS/Karoly Arvai