World Cup-winner Lippi keen on England
Marcello Lippi, one of the five contenders for the England managerial vacancy, has indicated his desire to talk to the Football Association. As the coach who masterminded Italy's 2006 World Cup-winning campaign, Lippi will inevitably interest the FA, who want all potential candidates, including the front-running trio of Lippi, Fabio Capello and Jose Mourinho, to come to London for discussions.
The FA are determined to avoid a repeat of the embarrassment of the last search for an England manager when their chief executive, Brian Barwick, flew to Portugal but returned home without his intended target, Luis Felipe Scolari. Although Sir Trevor Brooking, the FA's director of football development who is assisting Barwick in the hunt, was out of the country yesterday, the FA stress that all face-to-face talks with candidates will take place in England.
Contact with representatives of Mourinho and Capello has already taken place and word that Lippi could be available will excite the FA. Of all the five aspirants, which also includes Martin O'Neill and Jurgen Klinsmann, Lippi is the coach who most merits the description of "world class" as defined by Barwick.
There is a lot of work going on behind the scenes but neither Trevor or Brian have met with any of the potential candidates yet."
If the suspicions of most people at the FA are confirmed, and Mourinho signs a pre-contract with a club, then the race to replace Steve McClaren appears an all-Italian duel between Lippi and Capello.
Klinsmann, the German based in California, is considered the outsider of the five, while O'Neill's commitment to Aston Villa will be clarified only when the FA sound him out in person