Fabio Capello is a born winner. As a midfielder with Roma, Juventus and Milan, he won four Italian league championships and two cups, and played for his country 32 times, scoring a goal at Wembley in 1973 in Italy's first ever win in England. As a manager, Capello's fierce determination has seen him win championships - nine of them in 16 years - with every club he has taken charge of, from the great Milan team he helped create in the early 1990s to Real Madrid with David Beckham in 2007.
Now he faces his greatest challenge yet, the challenge that he has said is his long-cherished dream, and the last of his glittering coaching career. To restore England to the top of the world football tree, to take his adopted country to the World Cup in South Africa in 2010, and to win it. For Capello, nothing less than the best will do. For England, it is win or bust. And you don't want to lose under Capello.
In this, the first ever biography of the new England manager, award-winning writer Gabriele Marcotti travels from Capello's early days in Italy to his first months in his new job at Soho Square to tell the story of the man behind the steely glare, the method behind the sometimes manic behaviour. Capello's drive for success at any cost has seen him make more than a few enemies over the years, and Marcotti has talked to them all, as well as his closest associates. No-one has ever got this close to Capello before, and this is the story not just of a remarkable career, but of the life of a truly extraordinary man.
