Anti-Germany comments expose England’s Fabio Capello as a bitter hypocrite

COMMENT
By Clark Whitney | German Footbal Editor

Fabio Capello has, in the past, been heavily criticised for failing to understand the culture of the nation he manages, so it was almost inevitable that, when commenting on a foreign nation, the England trainer would make a monumental gaffe.

Sure enough, Capello did just that on Friday. Whilst speaking at the Dubai International Sports Conference, he criticised Germany for utilising players of mixed background at the 2010 World Cup.

“These players are acquiring new passports,” he said. “Germany had five of Turkish origin who opted to represent them and we all know what happened.”

What happened was Germany’s 4-1 hiding of England in the round of 16.

Capello’s comments on Germany were not the primary focus of his discussion, which included a legitimate criticism of European club football culture. He understandably voiced concern for a system which allows for the poaching of young, talented players by wealthy clubs that can offer incentives for financially-disadvantaged families.

The result of such procedure has monetary value for such households, but comes with the less-savoury effects of dissociating youngsters from their native cultures and maintaining the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” in club football. But for Capello to criticise Germany was foolhardy, and smacked of envy and a painfully myopic worldview.

To begin with, Germany’s World Cup squad included two, not five, players of Turkish descent: Mesut Ozil and Serdar Tasci. There were others of mixed origin, Dennis Aogo, Jerome Boateng, Mario Gomez, and Sami Khedira, but like the Real Madrid and Stuttgart stars, these players were all born in Germany, not poached from modest Nigerian, Ghanaian, Spanish, and Tunisian clubs during their youth.

Granted, there were indeed some Germany internationals born on foreign soil, including Miroslav Klose, Lukas Podolski, Marko Marin, Piotr Trochowski and Cacau. But Klose is an ethnic German, and Podolski offered himself to Poland and was rejected before finalising his international affiliation. Nor was Marin poached by a wealthy club; his family fled war-torn Yugoslavia when Marko was just two years old.
Within his own statements, Capello not only opens the door for criticism, but unwittingly identifies his own hypocrisy in the case of capping Manchester-born Danny Welbeck, whose parents were both born in Ghana. The manager defends his decision to select the 21-year-old by citing the player’s residence in Manchester and claiming parental permission. How, then, is it wrong for a player like Mesut Ozil, who was born in Gelsenkirchen to ethnic Turkish parents and lived his entire life in Germany, to represent his homeland? The Welbeck and Ozil situations are in direct parallel, and, in revealing his double standard, Capello has been hoist by his own petard.

Not that the above should bear any consequence on the legitimacy of a player’s national affiliation. When Capello spoke of German footballers of Turkish ‘origin’, players of ethnic Turkish background, his words came from an antiquated perspective. The ‘origin’ of these players is Gelsenkirchen, Esslingen, or otherwise. They were raised in German society and, most importantly, trained in Bundesliga academies. Their culture may be mixed, a reality that ought to be celebrated, but their origin is undeniably German. Only their ancestors’ origin, be it parents, grandparents, or even further down the family tree, can be considered to be Turkey.

The ultimate irony is that Capello, born in San Canzian d’Isonzo, Italy, never had any professional ties to the UK before he gladly accepted the FA’s €7 million-per-year offer to fill the vacant role of manager. For such a wage, he’d do better to hold his tongue rather than shame the people of England as he did on Friday.

Follow Clark Whitney on