On Soccer:English football is always in danger of collapsing under the weight of its own self-importance, but last week it may well have reached critical mass.
As if the frenzy surrounding the appointment of "Fab" Fabio wasn't enough, we then had to endure Sky's insufferable smugness as they promoted "Grand Slam Sunday" with all the hysterical gusto of a heavyweight boxing promoter. All Richard Keys needed was a Mr Whippy haircut and some chunky jewellery and he could have passed for Don King.
There is a very obvious irony to all this - namely that one of the reasons England need Capello's services is because their so-called golden generation proved nothing more than an over-hyped media artifice - although don't expect anyone to notice. Self-awareness is not exactly an English strong point.
At times like this, give thanks for men like Steve Coppell. There is no more effective antidote to the Premier League's pomposity than Reading's manager, whose tone rarely rises above the laconic. What's more, he speaks with the good sense fostered by one of the most successful, and underrated, careers in management.
If the FA had shown a shred of imagination, it might have been Coppello, rather than Capello, beginning his reign as England head coach this week. But England's loss might yet be another's gain: there is still a job going in Abbotstown, where the FAI are continuing to deliberate over a replacement for Steve Staunton.
After the chaos that accompanied Staunton's ill-fated tenure, Ireland need a steady hand and a level head and Coppell has both. He long since realised that football at the coal-face is no place for dreamers: when he embarked on his career at Crystal Palace in the mid-1980s, he harboured hopes of making his bunch of journeymen play football the Manchester United way. A five-goal drubbing by rough and ready Wimbledon soon exploded that fantasy and Coppell soon saw the light.
"They gave us the ultimate lesson," he recalled. "If you can't innovate, imitate: we became more direct."
Palace duly became an even more spiky version of their south London neighbours and Coppell was rewarded with an FA Cup final appearance, third place in the old First Division and a clutch of England international players.
Football has changed since then, of course. You only need to stand next to one of Arsenal's beefcakes to understand that the best teams are now able to marry muscle and guile, but Coppell - a graduate in economics history - is intelligent enough to adapt his own managerial methodology to the demands of the modern game.
Reading would never be classed as great entertainers but neither are they cloggers. They have speed, skill and subtlety up front but still possess the sort of ball-winners who make opposing strikers go weak at the knees. It is a simple formula that has turned a grey blur of a football club into a Premier League force.
Coppell's penchant for transformation - he achieved similarly miraculous results at Brentford and Brighton - should make the FAI even more determined to lure him across the water. Shay Given and Robbie Keane may be 24-carat professionals, but the rest of the squad is made from base metals and only a master-alchemist like Coppell can hope to achieve results with such resources.
There is also every indication that he would be open to offers. Coppell has already spoken of being weary of club management and suggested he could take a sabbatical from football when his Reading contract expires in 2009.
Ireland would not be strange soil to the Reading supremo. When Coppell joked last season that he only made Irish scouting trips for the Guinness, nobody was fooled. He has long plundered the country for its footballing resources, first with Palace and then with Reading.
His academy director Eamonn Dolan alerted him to the availability of Kevin Doyle, who was signed along with Shane Long, and only last year he raided Cork again for Alan Bennett.
The one doubt which still shrouds Coppell is his willingness to deal with the froth and nonsense that accompany the position of a national coach. All his best work has been at clubs who drift beneath the media's radar and his critics are never slow in pointing out that he lasted just 33 days at Manchester City.
But to dwell on these concerns would be desperately unfair. It is true that Coppell dislikes the peripheral irritations of management - the press briefings and being hassled by agents - but his passion for football is undimmed and, despite his public utterances at the time, it was not pressure that drove him out of City.
Coppell remains an outsider. In job hunts, it is often those who shout loudest who laugh longest and Coppell's steadfast refusal to inflate his public profile could count against him. But wouldn't it be refreshing for the Quiet Man to get his chance on the international stage?
