Backing John Terry cost Fabio Capello England manager's job

There was no way the Italian could keep the England job without causing a major rift within the dressing room.

Fabio Capello paid for his loyalty to captain John Terry.

It was no big surprise Fabio Capello quit the England manager's job, but the fact is he had to go to prevent a major split within the team.

We all knew Capello was going after Euro 2012 but he felt undermined by the decision made by the Football Association to take the captaincy off John Terry.

I have a little bit of sympathy for him there because he found himself in a mess which was far more serious than a football issue.

The Crown Prosecution Service has decided that Terry has a case to answer for alleged racist abuse of Anton Ferdinand, a case that is not going to be decided until after the tournament.

The four or five black players in the England squad rightly had an issue with their captain and what he's accused of, and I don't blame them.

I'm not sure that Capello, whose English was patchy at best, quite knew the severity of the charges, but someone had to take the captaincy away from Terry, for the sake of dressing-room harmony as well as the commercial reasons which undoubtedly influenced the decision.

That's just one more problem to add to England's many issues which prevent the team doing well in tournaments.

I saw how England worked when I played for the national team.

You have a deeply divided camp, with club rivalries rife.

You have players with big egos wanting to be the main man. They cut their own commercial and book deals, they leak stories to favoured journalists knowing that they will get a better press in return.

It's always about the individual, never the team.

England could appoint Barcelona's Pep Guardiola or Real Madrid's Jose Mourinho as the manager to replace Capello and it still wouldn't work out.

The job of England manager is an impossible one, where expectations are unrealistically high and the media have far too much say.

If the manager doesn't do as they want then he is absolutely slaughtered by journalists who are less qualified than the coach to do the job.

Reputations are easily damaged and destroyed when you are the England manager. Managers get swayed and eventually toppled by the barrage of negative press. It happens time and time again and nothing will change.

Over-expectation is another problem. The media whip up the English to believe that they have a genuine chance of winning every major tournament they qualify for - which isn't even every major tournament.

When that fails to happen, there's a huge backlash and the manager is ridiculed.

Graham Taylor was pictured as a turnip, while my old coach Steve McClaren was called "the wally with a brolly".

That was unfair. McClaren is a very good coach who helped Manchester United win the treble, yet his reputation was destroyed when he had the England job. The over-expectation comes from the fact that England once won the World Cup in 1966.

So people who live in the past think that England should be competing with Spain or Brazil or Germany, despite these countries having far superior players, tactics and a genuine team ethos

There's also an arrogance because England was where football started. I'm sorry, but that counts for nothing in the present.

And the Premier League is widely regarded as the best league in the world. Fans see the planet's best players every week and become accustomed to high standards. They see English teams do well in Europe and think that the England team should do the same in international tournaments, as if it's a divine right. It isn't.

Other countries produce better footballers than England, that's why there are so few English players in the Premier League.

It doesn't matter who you have in charge, a manager can only work with the players he has. Nobody expects Aston Villa or Everton to win the Premier League with their players, so why do people expect England to win the World Cup or European championships.

Harry Redknapp, the Tottenham Hotspur manager, is now the favourite to take charge. He's a good manager, but he's won one trophy in 25 years in management.

But the media love him because he keeps them sweet, just like my old boss Terry Venables did.

He makes the journalists feel like they are in the know and appeals to their egos.

If he gets the job then it will start with a love in, before the knives are slowly sharpened and then brought out when England don't manage to beat Spain or Brazil.

The media really do have a lot to answer for when it comes to the England manager.

The whole thing is a circus and I can understand why a lot of fans of clubs, especially those not in London, have very little interest in the England national team.

Capello is 65, but I'm sure he will want to return to football to prove what an excellent coach he is. And prove that the coach isn't the problem with England, but the whole national team set up.

Andrew Cole's column is written with the assistance of European football correspondent Andy Mitten.