Fabulous taste of Italian vintage

Your average 57-year-old coach would not dream of wearing one of the figure-hugging jerseys manufactured for modern athletes, yet Fabio Capello looks dandy in AS Roma’s skin-tight top as he saunters into the café at the club’s plush complex at Trigoria. Trim and tanned, Capello burns off a compelling aura. ‘Sit!” he instructs, patting the seat next to him. When Capello says sit, you sit.

It has been an unpleasant few days for one of European football’s coaching giants. The raw and chaotic atmosphere that has enveloped his club since the Rome derby was abandoned on March 21 was hardly soothed by a slap round the face in the Uefa Cup administered by those upstarts from Villareal, while an extra irritation came via Chelsea’s well-publicised desire to dangle a cheque at impoverished Roma for their brightest talents.

Any unwanted questions from the Italian media are handled with challenging gruffness from a man who it is impossible to ruffle.

It is a useful quality in the emotionally frenetic world of calcio. Italian football dragged itself into the abyss at the derby as seats burned, flares sailed on to the pitch and police sirens wailed until the crowd had dispersed from the Stadio Olimpico. Then, 48 hours after the Rome fiasco, AC Milan waved a magic wand and — glory be — suddenly Italian football was in raptures at the San Siro.

Milan scaled heights of attacking football against Deportivo la Coruna that made even the Spanish gawp in admiration.

In a bewitching nine-minute spell, Carlo Ancelotti’s team adorned an exciting game with four works of art. Their attacking masterclass was one in the eye for those who had reacted to Milan’s Champions League triumph last year with a sneering critique, as if an intense 0-0 draw and penalty shoot-out were an affront to the romantic ideal of the European Cup. The best have just got better.

Down in Rome, Capello is in a good position to assess Milan. His Rossoneri vintage is fondly remembered for winning the Champions League a decade ago with unadulterated swagger, wounding Barcelona four times without reply in the final.

So, how do Milan 2004 compare to Milan 1994? Capello wastes little time getting to the crux of the matter: ‘This Milan side won the Champions League without winning the championship [they qualified with a fourth-place finish in Serie A]. When we won it you had to win the championship first to qualify for the Champions League, which is more difficult.”

So can this Milan win the Scudetto and the Champions League? They are on course for both, and Capello sees little evidence of the red and black juggernaut slowing down: ‘Milan are having a fantastic season. They have very talented players and are more flexible tactically than a year ago. For anyone else to win the league, Milan have to start losing as well as for us to keep winning.”

The two Brazilians who arrived at Milan in the summer have had a magical effect. The effortlessly expressive Kaka is the key, having coaxed more panache from a side who were already very powerful, while Cafu brings electricity to the right flank.

Everyone else has enhanced their game in response — in midfield the creative Andrea Pirlo and combative Clarence Seedorf have never played so sweetly; at the back there are calls to bring Paolo Maldini back from retirement for Euro 2004.

The fact that Silvio Berlusconi’s club are financially stable enough to maintain a well-stocked, high-class squad is something of which Capello, one suspects, is a little envious.

‘Milan have more players, more rotation,” he says. ‘This makes it easier to stay competitive in both competitions when Andrei Shevchenko and Pippo Inzaghi were injured Jon Dahl Tomasson came in, they changed the system a little bit, and kept winning games. They succeed at the top even if they have to change personnel.”

So, presumably Milan are going to win the Champions League? Capello chuckles as he weighs up the options.

‘Phew! Milan have a great chance of lasting the distance because they have the easiest route. Arsenal are a good side — I know Arsène Wenger well — and on top of a very strong, compact team they have two players of particularly high creative quality who can make the difference: Robert Pires and Thierry Henry. Arsenal have a good mixture of physical and technical qualities.”

The combination of athleticism and ability is a central theme in Capello’s coaching manual.

The ripening partnership of Francesco Totti and Antonio Cassano — the jewels in Roma’s, and potentially Italy’s, crown — is something he has worked on with extreme care.

‘They have enormous potential,” he says. ‘It’s wonderful to help them grow and watch them blossom, but a lot depends on how they are physically.

‘Michael Owen is a very talented player, but he is held back by his physical problems and all his injuries prevent him from playing continuously. In modern football it’s fundamental to have the physical shape to match your talent because you can’t show your ability if you are not fit. The really talented players are the ones who play at high speed, who do things before anyone else sees it.”

Like Owen, Capello fancies the idea of adding an English championship to his CV.

‘I’d like to work in England very much. I would like another foreign experience,” he reveals.

‘All the different European countries have their virtues. I like the physicality of the English game, the speed and creativity of the Spanish game. But imagine if France were able to keep all their players in France, that would be the best. They produce excellent players.”

The obvious English destination is Chelsea and he is high on their short list.

Although Capello offered what sounded like an obliged denial of any contact from England (he has another year on his highly lucrative Roma contract) a compromise doesn’t look too far-fetched considering the club is so financially stricken.

The suggestion that his club play enthralling football in spite of their off-field crisis makes Capello laugh drily.

‘Yes,” he muses. ‘The players have been very professional in only thinking about playing football.”

It’s just a pity that a minority of fans could not do the same. The ramifications of the Rome derby are still being debated in Italy, with the authorities rightly concerned that they set a precedent by abandoning a match at the behest of the ultras.

The supporters are, as Sven-Goran Eriksson noted having observed the bizarre events at his former club Lazio, dangerously powerful.

As he succinctly put it: ‘I remember when I sold Beppe Signori they tried to wreck my Volvo.” —