SAME OLD EXCUSES, FABIO

• Our players don't play for England like they do for their clubs
• They play too many games
• We're trapped in a club versus country tug of war
• The players are hampered by the influx of foreigners into the Premier League.
• English football league is too fast and furious

Heard it all before? Of course you have.

As England goalkeeper David James once famously commented: "It's deja-vu all over again!"

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But ask Capello what he's going to do about it all and suddenly he's not so sure.

In a couple of weeks, the likes of John Terry, Steven Gerrard, Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard and Joe Cole will be flaunting their wares in the quarter-finals of the Champions League.

Capello will be there to witness those games and he'll more than likely see three English teams book their place in the semi-finals of the most prestigious tournament in the world.

What, if anything, will he learn? That Gerrard dominates the stage for Liverpool but shrinks when it comes to representing his country, morphing into a pale shadow of his invincible Anfield self?

That Lampard, Terry and Cole appear a match for any foreigner in terms of Champions League technique but too often freeze with Three Lions on their chest?

Or that Rooney is a force of nature for Manchester United whose goal-scoring technique deserts him when England calls?

Capello comes with a gilded reputation but in this, his first real test as England manager, can we expect the Italian to find solutions which have troubled every one of his predecessors for the past two decades.

Sadly, there were certainly more challenging questions than convincing answers when he faced the Sunday newspaper's football correspondents ahead of Wednesday's friendly against France in Paris.

Take a look.

Q: Is your biggest challenge to try to get the English players to play for their country like they play for their clubs?

A: It is my challenge but it's a challenge we need to win together, me and the players.

Q: We see them play great for their clubs but when they play for England they seem to shrink.

A: I know, I know. This is the job I have set out, this is the target I have set out to achieve in the five friendly games I have at my disposal before the competitive games.

Q: Every manager for 40 years with England has had the same task but hasn't managed it. Why?

A: Well, as we said before this is a challenge and in order to achieve your targets you need to understand where you need to operate and where you need to work. At the moment I am working towards understanding what needs to be done. I am also gathering information on where I can work in order to avoid making the same mistakes that were made in the past.

Class

Q: We've been told for years this is a golden generation but do the English people over-estimate their own players? Are they really world-class?

A: I believe they ARE world-class players. But having world class players is not enough if you don't have a winning mentality, a team, a group mentality.

Q: You say we do have world-class players. Can you tell us who those world-class players are?

A: No.

Q: What? You don't know?

A: Well, if I'm in this job presumably I know who they are and I think I've been the manager of a few world-class players in my time.

Q: But you don't talk much about specific players. Who are the key players in your England?

A: There are obviously important players, key players but wherever I've worked so far if you want to build a house you start with what you already have and capitalise on that. The important thing is we need to win back self-confidence and the right mentality in order to do good things.

Q: You've seen the intensity of the Premier League and it's often said that our players are worn out by the end of the season when they come to play for England. Do you see that as a problem?

A: It is a problem, especially for the teams that don't have a very big squad because they can't rotate players and give them time to recover. It's certainly true that in England players play a very high number of games and all of them at a very high intensity. So it's obvious that at the end of the season players cannot be physically fresh.

Q: Is it the same in Spain or Italy?

A: It's different here, the type of football played is more physical.

Q: As an international manager what can you do about it?

A: I can't do anything. Club managers are there to win so they need to keep intensity high so I get the players in the conditions they are given to me by the clubs.

Q: Does that make the England job the hardest in world football?

Intensity

A: No. It's important to be able to work according to the moment and the physical condition of the players. It's important not to have a single system in place. It's important that players understand that you can't always run at the same speed, at the same intensity. And that means we need to be intelligent enough to understand when we can run and when we can't run.

Q: Can you explain why English clubs are so successful in European competition whereas on the international front we struggle?

A: First of all we need to get back to the 38 per cent of English players playing in the Premier League. As you can see we only have two teams amongst those who reached the last eight in the Champions League who have English players, Chelsea and Manchester United. We have only one English player at Arsenal and two at Liverpool. So we have some important players in English teams that play really well but they are supported by foreign nationals who help hem perform very well.

Q: Do you see that as a problem, the influx of foreign players holding back the England side?

A: This is a problem that is being debated in Italy too and it's not that I don't want foreign players. When there are good players they normally end up playing for the good teams but obviously there are moments when there are more good players and moments when there are less.I guess the same can be said about managers.

And although Capello can clearly see all the problems, the burning - and as yet unanswered question is: Can he provide the solutions?