Semi-conscious Barwick Raises the Bar for Capello

On Tuesday the Football Association delivered its verdict on the Euro 2008 debacle. The men from Soho Square are fighting mad. They have broadcast an unprecedented ultimatum: Fabio Capello's team must reach the semi-final of a major tournament in the next four years or else . . . Well, they haven't exactly said, though past evidence would suggest pursed lips, vast sums of compensation and the odd non-attributed sarcy remark. You can rest assured, though, that as far as the FA is concerned from now on failure is not an option, except once or twice after the majority of the other teams have already gone home.

The message from the FA to our foes could not be plainer: quail before us Brazil and Argentina, shiver nervously Italy, cover your eyes and dive behind the sofa Germany and France, for we are England and we shall not rest until there are only three nations in the world/Europe better than us at football.

Some may denounce this as madness and folly. After all, they will say, England already have the most highly paid coach and the richest squad in international football - surely that should be enough to satisfy the nation as to our international omnipotence?

However, the FA chief executive, Brian Barwick, is not a man given to sitting on his bank statements and sighing complacently. He is a dynamic visionary used to making bold statements of intent. This after all is the steely-eyed autocrat who as head of BBC Sport handed commentary duties at the 1994 World Cup final to Barry Davies when everyone thought John Motson would get the job because he was marginally less likely to bring everyone out in hives. When you have wrestled with something really important like that, telling Don Fabio that, if he doesn't achieve a success rate comparable with that of Belgium in the 1980s, then he can bloody well pocket his £20m and get out of town is child's play.

Vince Lombardi, notoriously hard line coach of the NFL's Green Bay Packers, was given to remarking: "Winning isn't the most important thing. It's the only thing." Barwick has delivered his own devastating riposte to the gridiron hero: "Winning isn't the most important thing. And it isn't the only thing either." With this new kind of win-if-at-all-possible mentality, England will surely be unstoppable, at least until the final whistle of a game against the side that ends up coming second.

Little wonder that from Berlin to Buenos Aires rival administrators are trying to come to terms with the big Liverpudlian's defiantly compromising message: "For England only fourth every so often is good enough." Doubtless many of them will throw themselves from windows in despair when the full import of this robust ordinance sinks in. For surely bolstered by the FA chief's throbbingly belligerent no-quarter-finals-asked-and-none-given-away mind-set there is not a penultimate hurdle that England can't expect to balk at in the years ahead.

Some may wonder why the FA has settled on semi-finals as their ultimate goal. The reason is simple: in English football the top four has now become the symbol of achievement. As an ex-pro bitterly remarked to me a few years ago as we watched the Liverpool players doing a lap of honor after missing out on the title by 30 points, "The Champions League places have allowed teams to succeed by failing."

England, like every club in England, are simply desperate to join The Big Four. Once you are in The Big Four it does not matter if you win anything because you are in The Big Four and that is enough. You are The Big Four.

This is because just about everybody in English football these days believes gaining a place in the Champions League is the high water mark for any club and the zenith of every footballer's career, a guarantee of sporting immortality. It is as if, long after we have all forgotten Tom Finney and Stanley Matthews, fans across the land will still be gabbling excitedly about the left-sided midfielder from the Big Four team that went out 2-1 on aggregate in the first knock-out stage to that side that finished second in the previous season's Bundesliga.

International football is different, of course. Yet such is the mind-warping power of The Big Four it seems impossible that Barwick will not have been affected by it. I'm sure he knows that finishing in the top four in South Africa in 2010 will not assure England of a place in some even more lucrative competition but I can't help wondering if somewhere at the back of his mind there isn't a little voice whispering that if JT, Stevie G and co can just squirm beyond the quarter-finals, then the next August we'll be playing in the first qualifying round of the Inter-Planetary Champions League against the galactic equivalent of the team that carried off the Ukrainian title.