The public outcry was immediate — not because the Italian-born coach was leaving early, but because he stayed too long.
"Good riddance," London's Daily Mirror said.Arrivederci, agreed the Mirror and rival tabloid the Sun.
The Football Assn., which rules English soccer with an uncompromising iron fist, wanted Capello out so badly it couldn't even wait five months for his contract to expire, reportedly paying him $2.4 million to go away now.
So how could a marriage that started off so well end so poorly?
Much of the blame undoubtedly lies with Capello. But the high expectations and arrogance of both the FA and English fans also played a part — as did allegations of racism and overtones of xenophobia, two issues that have long plagued international soccer.
The FA hired Capello in 2007 to save a program that failed to qualify for the 2008 Euros, the last in a series of disasters for a group of players — Steven Gerrard, Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard, Wayne Rooney, John Terry — Fleet Street had hailed as English soccer's "Golden Generation."
But the "Golden Generation" never shined under three coaches, failing to advance past the quarterfinals of any major tournament. Overall England's national team hasn't won a significant soccer crown in 46 years.
So desperate was the FA for success that it made Capello, formerly the head man at Real Madrid and Milan, the richest national team coach in the world, paying him about $10 million a year. What it didn't do, however, was require him to improve his often-indecipherable English or acknowledge even a passing interest in — or respect of — English culture.
None of that made much of a difference when Capello was winning — and in his four years with England he won two-thirds of his games, the best winning percentage for a national team coach since World War II. He had the FA's support for doing things his way, with an old-fashioned adherence to discipline, banning cellphones from the team's training camp and once dressing down forward Peter Crouch for wearing slippers in the lobby of the team hotel.
Before the 2010 World Cup, that kind of discipline was seen as a necessary evil — and, in fact, was the main reason he got the job in the first place. But when England bowed out in the tournament's second round, Capello's approach was criticized as unnecessarily evil.
The autocrat had become anachronistic.
Which is why you can find both justice in irony in the FA's decision to show Capello the door only after the noted disciplinarian had failed to show some discipline of his own.
Earlier this month the FA stripped the armband off Terry, the English captain, who will stand trial this summer over allegations of a racial slur directed at Anton Ferdinand in a Premier League game last season. (More irony: Capello had removed Terry as captain two years earlier after Terry, a married father of two, was alleged to have had an affair with the wife of a former teammate. And the man Capello replaced him with? Rio Ferdinand, Anton's brother.)
Capello was not consulted on Terry's second demotion and, rather than displaying a stiff upper lip, he voiced his displeasure through the Italian media. It led to an hourlong meeting with FA Chairman David Bernstein last Wednesday that ended with the coach's resignation, followed by a handshake.
Before Capello could get to the airport, the long knives were unsheathed and the back-stabbing began.
"Got to be English to replace him," tweeted Rooney, who at least had the grace to compliment Capello, the second foreign-born coach in national team history, as a "good guy and top coach."
Rio Ferdinand, Capello's former captain, also called for an English coach.
"We need an English manager now," he tweeted. "We don't need anything else lost in translation."
And just in case anyone missed the point, Barry Fry, a longtime soccer coach and administrator, cleared things up in his rant on Sky Sports News.
"I can't believe any Englishman wants a foreigner as manager of our country," he said. "We've had enough of these foreigners. They ain't got no passion, no commitment. All they want is the money. Englishman in charge of England."
Fry is almost certain to get his wish. Stuart Pearce, coach of the U-21 team and the British Olympic team, will take over for Capello on an interim basis, directing England in its friendly against the Netherlands later this month. On Friday, Bernstein formally began the search for a permanent replacement, with most of the speculation focusing on Tottenham Coach Harry Redknapp.
But while Pearce and Redknapp are both as English as London Bridge, Bernstein refused to make promises.
"He will not definitely be English," the FA chief said of England's next coach. "In the end we want the best person so I'm certainly not prepared to rule anything out at this stage."
And with that, the soap opera takes another turn. Redknapp, for example, didn't become a sure-fire candidate for the national team job until a jury cleared him on two charges of tax evasion after a five-year investigation. Interestingly, that verdict came in just hours before Bernstein coaxed Capello to resign.
"Well, well, well, this debacle claims yet another victim," tweeted longtime Premier League standout Joey Barton. "Where does this stop. #madness No captain and no manager. 4 months from a major championship. What's going on......."
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