Click here to have the Fiver delivered direct to your inbox every weekday at 12pm(ish), or if your usual copy has stopped arriving NOT SO FAB Fabio Capello was supposed to be different. With eyes so powerful that they can even shut James Corden up – which make him the world’s first purveyor of the fatal glare – and designer spectacles that hint at an ocean of thrilling metro$exuality lurking fractionally beneath the surface, he seemed to have it all. Best of all, he wasn’t English, or a catatonic Swede. Yet Capello is starting to wear the haunted look of a man who has woken up after 18 months of marriage only to realise that the person snoring loudly to his left is the biggest psychopath on the planet ; as a consequence, he is starting to display the managerial behaviour of any other Tom, D1ck or Svennis. Chief among them is his apparent decision to continue the absurd English habit of ripping up and starting again after only one or two games of each World Cup. At every tournament since 1986, the England manager has made dramatic changes to tactics, personnel or both after one dodgy result in the group stages, and it seems Capello has done the same by deciding to replace Robert Green with David James for tonight’s musn’t-lose match against Algeria. Capello has more reason than most to change – Green is clearly mentally shot – and he could have picked Weird Uncle Fiver in goal for a game that England will win comfortably despite not playing particularly well. But the concern is that he is also reportedly planning significant changes elsewhere. The word in the Fiver’s local, the Slug & Manic Depression, is that Jermain Defoe or Joe Cole will replace Mr Em; in their very different ways, either move would represent a shredding of the gameplan that England honed so impressively during their qualification campaign. If it is legitimate to argue that England became a stronger team for those changes in 1986, 1990, 1998 and 2002, it’s also legitimate to argue that making such changes mid-tournament is indicative of weakness and/or a potentially reductive indecision. Either way, Defoe has been doing his best to earn a place by crawling round behind Capello, discreetly blowing as much smoke as possible up his surprisingly-pert-for-a-64-year-old derriere. “Obviously the manager is extremely disciplined but the manager is also cool and he’s got good banter,” brown-nosed Defoe, barely even convincing himself, never mind anyone else. “He joins in and is always laughing and stuff. But when we’re training, we’ve got to do it right.” Capello must also decide what to do on the left, where Shaun Wright-Phillips ran around a bit against USA! USA!! USA!!!. “Being picked was a very good surprise, I couldn’t have wanted any more than that,” said Wright-Phillips. “It was a step getting here and then another giant step to actually get on the pitch and play for the country in such a big tournament.” You’ll note he said nothing about actually playing well. SIGN UP FOR OUR FANTASY FOOTBALL GAME You can still sign up now and play daily competitions with the most exciting fantasy game on the web (oh, it’s free too) . QUOTE OF THE DAY “We looked at the film yesterday – 15 of us – and it was a very moving moment. This is what we need to do to unify the group and keep together” – Algeria midfielder Hassan Yebda reveals how the squad watched The Battle of Algiers war film to prepare for tonight’s game with England. The Fiver thinks they’d have done better to watch The Mouse That Roared. LIVE ON GUARDIAN.CO.UK TODAY Join Rob Smyth for MBM coverage of Germany 2-0 Serbia at 12.30pm, Paul Doyle for Slovenia 0-1 USA! USA!! USA!!! at 3pm and Barry Glendenning for England 3-0 Algeria from 7.30pm . DAYLIGHT RIBERY? France went into last night’s game against Mexico promising a much-improved performance. Instead they delivered an almighty provocation. The French press seized the bait, in the process writing the Fiver for us. Un Résultat! “This French team deserves nothing but scorn and will only be saved if the gods of football fall on their heads,” fumed Le Figaro, though L’Equipe insisted that scorn was too good for them. “No sadness, no desolation and, above all, no anger: that is too much to give to these men who are unable to offer anything,” pounded the organ under the headline THE IMPOSTORS before snapping: “The I-couldn’t-give-a-damn attitude is the only banner under which this team is capable of rallying.” So the French are fried. But La Depèche du Midi did detect at least one thing to smile about. “At the conclusion of a bland – or perhaps bitter – match, something nevertheless happened and it is the major scoop of this World Cup: it turns out that, beneath his arrogance, his Mr Know-it-All air, Raymond Domenech has been hiding a heart. A genuine heart. His dejection at the end of the match proved it, the way he turned to the TV camera and let slip a laconic ‘Today, I am crushed’. The tears he wept, the ones no one believed they saw, also proved it. So Raymond the haughty is human. It was about time he let us know.” Patrice Evra, the man whose attempt to prevent Mexico scoring a second goal consisted of ambling after Pablo Barrera with all the urgency of a man who has time to kill before heading to the gallows, finally found something out too. “We are not a great team,” he told journalists after the match, presumably before revealing that Thierry Henry handled the ball against the Republic O’Ireland and rain is wet. “I’m not going to start saying what the problem is, I’ll tell it to the people involved,” concluded Evra, hopefully on his way to a rendezvous with Raymond Domenech, Franck Ribéry, Sidney Govou, Eric Abidal, Nicolas Anelka and a mirror. WIN! WIN! WIN! Enter our ridiculously easy competition and you could win a shirt signed by one of the World Cup’s biggest names. Is it Maxim Kalinichenko? Wouldn’t you like to know. £66 HAT-TRICK OF FREE BETS WITH BLUE SQUARE Click here to find out more. FIVER LETTERS “Sorry this is a bit stale. but I have been spluttering in indignation for the last three days. Beckenbauer: ‘kick and rush’? Bloody cheek! What about the time he kicked Allan Clarke in the 1975 Big Cup final then rushed to the referee to make sure he didn’t give a penalty?” – Robert Heath. “I think one of Argentina’s strengths is their ability to throw wave after wave of attack at their opposition with strikers of various skill sets and styles of play. It makes them very hard to defend. According to John Harkes on ESPN’s broadcast here in the USA! USA!! USA!!!, the last three Argentinian goals against South Korea were scored by He-Gain, Hig-U-Ann and Hee-Gwan. When you add Messi, Tevez and Aguero to that group it becomes daunting” – R Reisman. “The Oranje ambush marketing campaign (Fiver passim) goes much deeper. How else to explain the prominence of dull Dutch pundits on UK TV screens? Can the Fiver encourage Fifa to investigate and lock them up before the knock-out phase” – Russ Weighton. “Having always been under the impression that the big teams were kept apart on the opening day of the season, I was somewhat surprised to see Liverpool paired with Arsenal on day one this year (yesterday’s bits and bobs). Oh” – Alistair Moffat. “As a fanatical but slightly pessimistic Liverpool fan would it be possible to secure our current alphabetical position in the Premier League ahead of the coming season?” – Mike Astbury. Send your letters to the.boss@guardian.co.uk . And if you’ve nothing better to do you can also tweet the Fiver now. BITS AND BOBS Argentina supporter Ernesto Soldati has been fined R200 (£17.82) and ordered to leave South Africa after attempting to steal 200g of Gouda from a supermarket. He had been due to fly home on Wednesday anyway, but missed his flight due to his court appearance. The Socceroos’ fine start to their World Cup campaign received a further boost today with news that Vincent Grella will miss the game against Ghana with knee-knack. Cameroon’s players have asked their coach Paul Le Guen to rethink his team selection for Saturday’s game against Denmark. “Many young fresh players have been introduced into the team at the expense of experienced ones,” tootled Achille Emana. Four North Korean footballers, who were rumoured to have disappeared, with some hypothesising desertion, are in fact available to the team. So says Gordon Watson, international PR representative for Fifa. “The rumour was started by a transcription error before the game,” chirped Watson. “I met the North Korean delegation last night and was told the players were with the team.” Manuel Pellegrini has held talks with Kenny Dalglish about taking the Liverpool manager’s job, even though Kenny Dalglish’s preferred candidate remains Kenny Dalglish. And a day after Portsmouth’s administrators reached agreement with the club’s creditors, thus saving the club a points deduction for the new Championship season, Steve Cotterill has taken over as manager. THE FIVER FANS’ NETWORK: HAVE YOUR SAY! In the spirit of mutualisation (ie this and this and this ), we’re offering this space to one Fiver reader a day to have their say on whether or not it’s a good idea to let football fans have their say. Here’s Chris Begley: “Have you ever been in a pub and had to listen to somebody explain what Team X should do? Why recreate that experience?” Send your efforts – in 140 characters or less – to the.boss@guardian.co.uk with ‘My say on people having their say’ in the subject heading and we’ll publish … something. STILL WANT MORE? Find out what’s happening at the World Cup right now with Sean Ingle . Rob Smyth’s World Cup paper view brings together nadirs, Winston Churchill and a $ex change. Barry Glendenning is back, and he’s brought beer for the latest edition of World Cup Daily . Kevin McCarra explains why $tevie Mbe needs to get back to his old ways against Algeria tonight. Mick McCarthy was as surprised by Spain’s reaction to defeat as by the fact of it. And Sir Geoff Hurst tells Small Talk whether his wife gets one finger or two . SIGN UP TO THE FIVER Want your very own copy of our free tea-timely(ish) email sent direct to your inbox? Has your regular copy stopped arriving? Click here to sign up . OH GEORGIE, HOW COULD YOU? Rob Smyth Paul Doyle guardian.co.uk
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The Fiver | The Fatal Glare; and The Impostors | Rob Smyth and Paul Doyle
