Capello message is getting through

More than two weeks after the end of the Premier League season and seven days after Chelsea met Manchester United in the Champions League Final, the hard-line Italian coach is asking England's finest to gather their strength and enthusiasm for two more challenges - the USA at Wembley tonight and Trinidad and Tobago in Port of Spain on Sunday - before heading off to the beach.

In the countdown to the European Championship, the connoisseur might consider these to be meaningless end-of-season friendlies but for Capello nothing could be further from the truth.

The England manager is using this 10-day gathering of his players to study how they interact and which of them truly embrace the ideas he believes will restore the nation's prestige on the world stage.

Quite understandably, some of his big names were initially reluctant to commit themselves after a long, hard season but it is significant that the England manager selects the team to face the USA from a full compliment of 29 players.

It is difficult to remember such a show of loyalty for friendly matches at the end of a gruelling campaign.

So, it seems, Capello's message is getting through. This was a date not to miss - and no one has missed it.

The Italian has used the last few days to assess the attitude of his players. He has organised training games to measure levels of commitment. He believes that how you train is how you play. Unlike some of his predecessors, there is no cruise-control during England get togethers these days.

He has been able to formulate ideas about the character of individuals and how they react with team-mates, and this information will form the basis of his squad selections when the World Cup qualifying campaign kicks off next season.

Team unity is an essential ingredient for Capello. "It's not one or two individuals who decide the outcome of a game," he said yesterday. "I believe it's the team that decides the game."

This is Capello's first experience of working with English players and he has been encouraged by their enthusiasm. For many of his biggest names, like John Terry and Frank Lampard, Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand, it was a demanding and emotional end to the season yet they have demonstrated their loyalty to the England cause.

It would have been so much easier for them, having suffered the ignominy of failing to qualify for Euro 2008, to slink off on holiday as their rivals gathered for a feast of elite football in Austria and Switzerland next month.

But it would not have been easy for them to forget their woeful performances against Croatia, the goalless draw with Macedonia at Old Trafford and the collapse against Russia in Moscow.

Those results represented a humiliating low point for England, so Steve McClaren was fired and Capello hired at £6 million-a-year to address the lack of ideas and creativity, the indifferent passing and the reckless surrender of possession.

These familiar failings were still apparent in Capello's opening games, the narrow 2-1 win over Switzerland at Wembley, and the 1-0 defeat to France in Paris.

If there is to be any progress before the World Cup qualifying campaign begins, we need to see signs of it against the USA, Trinidad and Tobago and the Czech Republic, who visit Wembley in August.

There is no doubt that, like his predecessors, Capello is handicapped by the diminishing numbers of English players in the Premier League. Less than 40 per cent of those taking part on the last day of the season qualified to play for this country.

"The numbers of English players available is important but the quality of the players is just as important," added Capello. "The quality of England's best players is very high - eight or nine featured in the Champions League Final."

Most of those will face the USA in front of a 70,000-plus crowd at Wembley tonight, with Lampard making his first appearance under Capello. "I know Lampard well," he said. "It is very important for the Chelsea players to forget what happened in Moscow and focus now on playing for their country." The reinstatement of Terry as captain will help him get over the penalty miss on what Capello described in his broken English as: "the not very nice Wednesday last week."

Terry and United's Ferdinand are practically set in stone as England's centre-back partnership, but there are places up for grabs in most other areas of the team.

If Rooney, for instance, is to play as the second striker, who is best equipped to lead the line in front of him - Peter Crouch, Michael Owen or perhaps West Ham's fit-again Dean Ashton, who is bound to get a chance in these two games?

More than anything, though, Capello wants to see a confident England tonight, playing a pressing game with speed and intensity.

If the players are focused he should get his wish. But anything less than a win will bring the derision of the Wembley crowd down on his head and render him speechless - in any language!