Fabio Capello: hides his finances as well as his plan for fixing England

A while ago, we blogged on a rather innocuous story to do with Fabio Capello and his involvement with an Italian corruption probe.

It was, at the time, nothing much to write about, a throwaway post, a space-filler. His son, Pierfilippo, even gave the BBC a wonderful sound bite back in the day about the boring, humdrum nature of such investigations. Yawn. Lame. Move on.

Well, the passage of time has spiced things up a bit, because it turns out little Fabio wasn't entirely honest with the authorities when they initially called him as a witness in the Juventus case.

I'm thinking they must have asked him what his ideas were for fixing the lifeless shitdump that is the English national team, and he said he had no idea.

It's so bad that an Italian prosecutor is thinking of bringing a criminal case against Capello.

Good thing we're not in Euro '08 then, eh?

From the BBC:

"The court case, which is ongoing, relates to the GEA World sports agency. The former Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi, who was at the centre of Italy's match-fixing scandal in 2006, and Davide Lippi, son of the former Italy coach Marcello, are among the defendants.

The England coach worked under Mr Moggi at Juventus until 2006, but it was his time in charge of Roma between 1999 and 2004 which most interested the court.

In court, he denied having been put under pressure over the management of players during his time at Juventus and Roma."

It gets better:

"Mr Capello, 61, was also asked about an interview he gave to the Corriere dello Sport newspaper about GEA and their alleged monopoly of players.

In that interview the coach said he knew many players were "gravitating towards that company". But when asked further in court about the interview, and details he had given in the initial inquiry, the England coach was less forthcoming.

Mr Capello is not thought to have lied, but the prosecutor believes he was evasive and at times obstructive in the evidence he gave."

[yeah, I quoted pretty much the whole article, what of it?]

I'm sure that like most things in life, this story will dribble to a disappointing, rather mundane conclusion. However, it's not exactly a good sign when you get caught hiding something, because that obviously implies that there was something worth hiding in the first place.

It's also not good because the England team is neck-deep in enough fucking shambles as it is, and yet now their talisman, the man charged with bringing the national team back into relevance and power, is probably a fucking cheat and a liar.

In retrospect, was Steve "The Ginger Idiot" McClaren really that bad?

[On second thoughts, don't answer that]